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Hypermind BoardGame Night - June 2007
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Weeks come and weeks go, but it is the gaming that makes the week worth bothering with. May was a high-water mark for our gaming group in Burlington, and we're hoping that June and the onset of summer will only continue our run of fantastic gaming. So stick around with us and witness our journey. And if you're in the central NC area, come and join us one Tuesday night! [shameless plug]By the way, for more information about the Hypermind Boardgamers and other gaming in my life, check out my blog at www.gamerchris.com .[/shameless plug] And in other cool news, I've just taken advantage of the new Guild feature here at BGG and set one up for the Hypermind Boardgamers!
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Posted Fri Jun 8, 2007 3:44 am
Edited Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:08 am
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Once again, this is the story of our inception and the first two and a half months of our BoardGame night. It'll help you catch up on the people involved and show you the progression of our membership and the games we've been playing.
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Game of the Month! - Tigris & Euphrates
(Check out my final review of this great game at http://gamerchris.com/2007/04/27/tigris--euphrates--game-of-... )
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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Game of the Month! - The Princes of Florence
Games played: The Princes of Florence, PitchCar, Struggle for Rome, Taluva, Star Wars: Episode 1 - Clash of the Lightsabers, Tumblin-Dice, To Court the King, Amun-Re, China, The Pillars of the Earth, Tier auf Tier, For Sale, Mission: Red Planet, Terra Nova, and Tichu .
Highlights: My favorite game was the Game of the Month! I (and several others in the Hypermind Boardgamers) had our first exposure to such classics as El Grande, Tichu, and China. We witnessed the bliss of pure and innocent (platonic) monkey love...
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4.
Board Game: Taluva
[Average Rating:7.17 Overall Rank:186]
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Our Game of the Month! for June is Taluva. This game has been a big hit with our group from the first time it hit our table. We were kind of looking for something a little lighter this month after having heavyweights in our first two months, so most of our discussion centered around games that could be played in around 30 minutes or less. Plus, we also wanted to explore a newer game, since both of our choices so far had been "classics".
Other nominees included Ra, Ticket to Ride, and To Court the King.
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 5, 2007
As I entered Hypermind this Tuesday, the "Magic" and "Fuzzy" Chrises were already busy getting started with a game of the new Days of Wonder game, Colosseum. Denise joined them, and for the next 90 minutes or so they proceeded to parade around Rome putting on little shows.
I was a little disappointed (and surprised) that I didn't, not even once, hear anyone shout "Are you not entertained?" in a bad Russell Crowe imitation during the whole game. I did pick up something about "Magic" Chris putting on some kind of "Pony Show" without any ponies, though.
Scores: Denise 83, "Fuzzy" 77, "Magic" 76
Ratings: Denise 8, "Fuzzy" 8, "Magic" 7
Mark and I were both there, salivating at the shiny gaming goodness we had been shut out of, so we decided to make our first foray into the new Game of the Month!, Taluva. We pulled out Mark's copy and set to playing. In just 14 minutes, we had split a pair of games and were ready to start again with Chip and Alton who had just come in.
We played one more game (which I won), before we moved on to another filler to try and kill a little time while Denise and the Dudes Named Chris got finished. Chip pulled out High Society and taught us the (very simple) rules.
Our scores were...
Game 1: Mark 10, Chip 1.5, Me 0, Alton -(least money)
Game 2: Me 10 (won tiebreaker), Alton 10, Chip 8.5, Mark -(least money)
Game 3: Me 20, Chip 13, Alton -20, Mark -(least money)
Ratings were: Chip 8, Mark 7, Me 6, Alton 7
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 5, 2007 (continued)
Still, even after we had our fill of filler games, the game of Colosseum was still going on. So I concinved our little play group to give a try to Industria. The main reason for wanting to play this was that I had spent a few hours over the last week (with the help of my lovely wife) applying all the cool English-language paste-ups that ferengi provided over in Industria's "files" section. As far as I know, the store's demo copy had never actually been played (which I attributed to it language-unfriendliness), so I took it upon myself to fix it up. In a rare moment of foreshadowing, I'll tell you that I shouldn't have bothered. But I will inflict upon you another beautiful picture of my beautiful sticker-applying ability...
As far as the game itself goes, we were less than impressed. I found the auction mechanic to be pretty neat, but in general the game is just boring. It's almost like the game needed one more mechanic to be involved to stir up more action. I bought a lot of the bonus tiles early, which paid off in the final scoring when I jumped ahead for the win.
Time: 69 minutes
Scores: Chris (Me) 39, Chip 37, Mark 37, Alton 18
Ratings: Chip 5, Mark 5, Chris 5, Alton 4
Of course, the other group had finished their game and played a few filler games of their own by the time we completed our snooze-fest of a game. Pam and Rick had come in and played one game each of Pentago and Terra Nova. They didn't fill out my extra-special reporting sheets, however, so I don't know how the games turned out. Then they joined "Magic" Chris and Denise for their first game of Taluva of the month. When the tiles ran out, "Magic" Chris had managed to place the most temples and claimed the win.
Most of the crowd were then ready to call it a night, but I managed to woo Denise and Chris to join me in a game of Mykerinos, which was new to all of us. I explained the rules as best I could and we got started.
The game is quick and relatively simple, and the only issue we had with it was that the little symbol they use on Lady Violet is not very informative. Especially once we got into the second season and began to figure out and use the patrons' powers, the game really came together. It is almost a double-barrel area influence design, with four rounds of placing cubes into excavations that then give you the ability to place cubes into the museum, which multiplies your score for each patron. There is also a tough choice between how many patron tiles to take and how many cubes to place in the museum. All in all, it was a really fun and quick middle-weight game that I hope to play again soon.
Scores: Chris (Me) 60, "Magic" Chris 50, Denise 46 (We later noticed that I made a little oversight in how scoring worked, but I don't think it would have changed the order in which we finished.)
Ratings: Chris (Me) 8, Denise 8, "Magic" Chris 7
So thus ends another fine BoardGame Night... Alas, we must wait with great expectation for another week to pass. Hope to see you then!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 12, 2007
As I prepared to write this week’s session report, I uploaded the pictures from my camera and was horrified to see that I had screwed them up royally. I had been playing with the different settings and apparently didn’t get them all back like they were supposed to be, so my color and focus are all screwy. Therefore, I won’t include many “fresh” pictures this week.
The good thing about this week was that I had two of my best and oldest friends, Kenny and Steve, join us for the first time. Of course, that makes the whole picture thing even worse, but I’ll just try to get over it (I hope you can move past it as well).
Anyway, on to the games!
Once again, seeing that it is the Game of the Month!, I taught Taluva to Kenny, Steve, and Steve’s wife Michelle. I provided a little coaching along the way on the rules and about basic strategy, but by the end everybody had a pretty good handle on things.
Scores: I won by using up all my Towers and Temples
Ratings: Chris (Me) 8, Steve 6, Kenny 7, Michelle 6
Meanwhile, Mark, “Magic” Chris, Chip, and Britt had another game of Taluva going at the other table. Chip pulled out the victory by having played out all of his Temples by the time the last tile was placed.
Ratings: Mark 9, Chris 9, Chip 8, Britt 7
My lovely wife Gwen then joined us as I taught To Court the King to our newcomers. Once again, getting used to the different characters and how to use their abilities took a little getting used to for them, but in the end Michelle won both games, taking the first by rolling eight “6’s” and the second by rolling eight “5’s”.
We’ve played this a lot lately at the Hypermind BoardGame night, and my impression of this game has changed a lot recently. Basically, I think that it does a really good job of pretending to introduce a lot of strategy into a dice game, but that in fact the whole thing is still dominated by blind luck. (Check out my review at http://gamerchris.com/2007/06/13/to-court-the-king--putting-... for a more in depth discussion of it).
Ratings: Michelle 9, Steve 8, Kenny 8, Gwen 7, Me 6
After their game of Taluva, the guys at the other table set up Britt’s shiny new copy of Warrior Knights. Between getting the multitudes of bits placed all over the table and teaching the rules to everybody, it took them a while to get started. Three hours and 20 minutes later, Mark proved victorious.
Scores: Mark 12, Chris 11, Alton 11, Britt 11, Chip 7
Ratings: Mark 7.5, Chris 6, Alton 8.5, Britt 7, Chip 7
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8.
Board Game: Antike
[Average Rating:7.29 Overall Rank:145]
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 12, 2007 (continued)
My side of the room felt a little left out of the “epic boardgame” action, so I pulled out my as-yet-unplayed copy of Antike and explained the rules to everybody. Gwen was feeling pretty tired, so she just watched the first few turns then headed home. We decided to play the “Orient” side of the board, and the civilizations were divided as follows: Kenny had the Greeks, Steve played the Persians, Michelle guided the Arabs, and I ascended to the Phonecian throne.
We started out a little slow, of course, and pretty much followed the same basic course for the first few turns (ramping up on Marble production and then making another temple). Steve was right in the center of the map, and he quickly got distracted, feeling threatened from all sides, and took some time to develop his military. I made a mistake early and seemed to get a turn behind because I didn’t build enough units to expand as I should have. Steve’s buildup kind of threatened Michelle, so she was also was a few turns too slow in beginning her expansion.
Meanwhile, Kenny was in full development mode and looked like some kind of Temple franchise. For several turns, he would alternate producing an indecent amount of marble and then turning around and building one or two temples the next. He kept finding time to expand and build new cities as well, so he was looking pretty unstoppable.
So I decided to focus on my gold production and developing the different technologies. Through expansion, destroying one of Steve’s temples, and earning “know hows”, I managed to get up to 8 ancient personages, just one away from victory!
But there was the yellow Greek armada, sailing seas left and right. In the last turn, he managed to conquer one more of Steve’s templed cities to get a General and claim his ninth city there, then found one more city in another area and get a King for the win.
Overall, we all really liked Antike. Most turns are quick and simple, and even the maneuver action and combat are easy to figure out after a few tries at it. Now that I’ve played, I think I understand the inherent value of things a little more, and I hope I get the chance to play again soon.
Scores: Kenny 9, Me 8, Michelle 5, Steve 4
Ratings: Kenny 9, Me 8, Michelle 7, Steve 7
So, another game night comes to a close and I must suffer through for another week. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it, and maybe I’ll even see you there!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 14, 2007
Yes, this is a report from a Thursday, not our usual Tuesday evening BoardGame Night! But I didn’t want my first play of a game as entertaining as Struggle of Empires to sink into the depths of time without at least one small footnote in history.
I bought Struggle of Empires 3 or 4 months ago after reading several very positive reports here on the ‘Geek, but haven’t been able to get it to the table until this week. I really think that the colonial period of European history is a pretty cool and slightly different setting for a board game, and the hybrid Euro/American rules used here really do a good job of capturing the theme.
So, in this special session of the Hypermind BoardGamers, I managed to corral Britt and Alton into giving the game a try. Both of them had previously voiced some interest in the game itself, and the three of us are probably the biggest fans (in our regular gaming group anyway) of the heavier-weight board games. So anyway, we laid out the board and all the many tiles and counters while I gave them the clearest rules explanation I could manage (having not actually played the game myself yet). I chose the British empire, while Alton took Prussia and Britt claimed the Austrians (even though we kinda screwed up and gave him the Spanish chits).
Despite my early domination of influence in the Caribbean (which caused me to take the “Sugar Plantations” tile) Alton made a power play in the “New World” and eventually claimed a total monopoly there. I let my influence slide there in lieu of seeking to gain control of the German States and Central Europe. I also established the only control tokens in the East Indes. Britt had firm control over the Baltic region, as well as sharing some control with me in Europe and fighting for India and the Mediterranean.
As far as alliances go, Britt and I were aligned against Alton for all three wars. But in general, direct combat amongst the empires was a pretty limited factor in the game. We just let Alton go off and play with himself in the Americas while we split up control of EurAfricAsia.
Britt regularly plagued by like 4 or 5 failed attempts to defeat another country marker in the Baltic region. In general, the dice were just against him, and even when he switched dice with Alton, the bad luck followed him. Even though we made a big deal over all the bad dice rolls that he had, from the outside it didn’t seem to affect him too terribly other than to rob him of a few of his actions. So I’ll be interested to see how big a factor luck continues to be if future games.
Once again, being our first game, we didn’t really know what we were doing strategically. The Militia tiles were hot commodities, allowing Alton and I to pump out several armies early in the game. Alton also invested in the War Office and Banking, both of which he used to good effect throughout the game. Britt tried out alliance tiles, which didn’t seem to do much good at all. Logistics helped me to defend my strongholds late in the game, so I was pretty pleased with them.
In the last war, Alton kind of left himself open in the Americas when he tried to get a foothold in Europe. I took advantage of this (using Logistics), and managed to end up with a control marker in both the Caribbean and South America. Britt tried to keep up with me in the German States, but I always managed to keep at least one control marker ahead to claim the highest VP total there. In the end, I managed to pull out the victory, with the final scores being: Chris (Me) 75, Britt 66, Alton 49. Our initial ratings for Struggle of Empires were: Chris (Me) 9, Britt 8, Alton 8.5 - for an obvious average of 8.5.
We all really enjoyed the game, and it only took us about an hour and 45 minutes to finish. We definitely want to make an opportunity to play again soon, and hopefully to bring in a larger crowd to enjoy it with us!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 19, 2007
Once again we come to the regular game night of the Hypermind Boardgamers! In addition to our regular crew, we were also joined by John, who is in town for the summer and will be doing some gaming with us. My dear wife Gwen was unable to join us this evening, but we still had a good dozen people participate throughout the night.
The first game of the evening was Ca$h 'n Gun$, a recent release and new addition to our combined game library. It is a quick game of bluffing and good-natured intimidation built around the theme of gangsters trying to divvy up their loot.
We played three games, each taking only about 10-15 minutes. We also learned that the “quick start” rules without the special powers are pretty boring, so we’ll plan on using them every time we play from now on.
The scores were as follows:
Game 1: Denise $210k, Me $95k, Pam $65k, Chris Ingersol DEAD, Zack DEAD
Game 2: Pam $105k, Denise $90k, Zack $85k, Me $65k, Chris $55k
Game 3: Pam $105k, Ian $100k, Me $75k, Zack $50k, Denise DEAD, Chris DEAD
Ratings: Chris 7, Pam 6, Zack, 6, Ian 7, Denise 8, Me 7
The game I had been looking forward to for this week was Ian’s copy of Notre Dame. Of course, this has been the Hot game around recently, with lots of hype coming out of Essen last year and the Gathering of Friends a few months ago. I had heard a lot about it and listened to a few podcasts describing how to play, so I was very excited to give it a try.
Chip, John, and I helped Ian set it up as he explained the rules to us. The game is really pretty simple, where most of the complexity comes from playing well rather than from just knowing how to play. The core card drafting/cube placement mechanics work well, and the carriage movement and “character hiring” mechanisms also add a few good twists into the game as well.
The game was extremely close, with Ian coming from behind to beat me by one point (50 to 49). Everybody was close at the end, and what impressed me most was that we all used widely different paths to get there. Chip and Ian were very conservative in limiting their rat track, then boomed in the late game to score lots of points. John and I "let ourselves go" as far as the rats went, but both of us used the park to gain extra VP's for most of the game.
Chip and I used the Carriage/Messages mechanic pretty extensively, while John scored lots of points from Notre Dame and Ian concentrated on the VP-gaining building (whatever it's called). I really thought I had the game wrapped up, but there was one or two rounds when I didn't have money to hire one of the characters available, and then I probably lost about 8 or 10 VP to the rats throughout the game, so all it would have taken would have been to tighten my play up just a little in one of these areas for me to have won.
Score: Ian 50, Me 49, Chip 48, John 44
Ratings: Ian 9, Me 8.5, Chip 8.5, John 8
I really liked this game, and hopefully I have enough familiarity with the game now that I can get in a few games both in person and in BSW pretty soon!
During our game, most everybody else jumped into playing our Game of the Month!, Taluva. The game ended up with Chris taking the game by placing all of his Temples and Huts (and he only had one Tower left as well).
Ratings: Chris 9, Rick 7, Zack 6, Pam 7
We still weren’t finished with Notre Dame, so Denise taught Pam and Chris how to play my new copy of the Spiel-des-Jahres-nominated Arkadia. Not only did Denise teach them how to play, she downright schooled them!
Score: Denise 144, Chris 128, Pam 50
Ratings: Denise 9, Chris 8, Pam 8
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11.
Board Game: Tikal
[Average Rating:7.43 Overall Rank:79]
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 19, 2007 (continued)
So after cleaning up Notre Dame, we decided to pull out Tikal and give it a try. Now, I’ve played Tikal a handful of times on SbW, and it’s never really tripped my trigger, but I wanted to give it a good shot in person to see if it was the online play that was frustrating me.
So Ian, Alton, John, and I set it all up and went over the rules. It is certainly a beautiful game in “real life”, and its mere size and brilliant colors make it command attention. But what I found is that I actually like the game even less in a face-to-face game than online (probably because it feels so laborious to me, which is at least broken up on SbW). Ian led the whole game, and in the early going I was right on his heels. But while Alton and John picked up steam, I just petered out. I don’t know why, but something about the game just doesn’t click with me, and the 95 minutes it took to play was pretty excruciating.
Score: Ian 103, John 102, Alton 96, Me 86
Ratings: Ian 6, Alton 8.5, Me 5
During this time, Rick, Brett, James, and Zack played a game or two of Liar's Dice. Shame on them, because they didn’t fill out a sacred report sheet and I have no other information about how things went.
After the most-loathed Tikal, everybody wanted our turn playing Arkadia. The game really has pretty simple mechanics, so it took a lot longer to set up the board than to teach the rules. I had played one 2-player game just a few days ago, so I thought I knew what I was doing. My prior knowledge actually proved to be a detriment, however, because the game plays completely differently with 4 people.
While there are no rule changes for different numbers of players, I found the pacing to be completely different. There is a lot more chaos involved, both in being able to plan for completing buildings as well as in manipulating the castle. I realized this too late, however, and got caught up in making long-range plans that were impossible for me to put into action. In fact, I only scored twice in the game (plus the final scoring), and many of my builders never produced any real benefit.
So in the end, I got smacked around (downright abused!) in my own game.
Score: Alton 90, John 73, Ian 72, Me 64
Rating: Alton 8.5, John 8, Ian 7, Me 8.5
Also during this time, James and Brett pulled out Lord of the Rings - The Duel and figured out how to play. They played two games, each claiming victory in one and both through resorting to the tie breakers.
Ratings: Brett 5, James 6
To finish off the evening, we again pulled out Ca$h 'n Gun$ for a couple of more games. Ian and I “bit the bullet”, and the second game was just a total bloodbath!
Game 4: John 150k, Alton 130k, Denise 90k, Ian DEAD, Me DEAD
Game 5: Denise 125k, Alton 75k, Ian DEAD, John DEAD, Me DEAD
Ratings: Ian 7, Denise 8, Alton 7, John 7.5, Me 7
So even though we always hate to end BoardGame Night, 11:30 was pretty late for us to be out on a work night. See y’all next week, when I’ll hopefully make a better showing for myself!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 26, 2007
This week was a little bit of a weird BoardGame night for me, seeing that I spent most of my time playing one really long game instead of several shorter games. And as if that weren't enough, I had to leave early (if you call 10:00 early), which made us stop the game before it was even over! So anyway, I obviously won't have pictures of anything after I left, but let's go ahead and get started...
My lovely wife was unable to join us this week, so I was "flying solo" for the evening. I arrived at Hypermind just after 5:30, and then managed to wrangle four other people up for a game of Notre Dame.
Joining a group of our "regulars" we also had John (back for the second week) and Sabrina, who has recently moved to Burlington. After playing last week, I managed to get in 2 or three games on BSW (and got royally spanked), so it fell to me to explain the rules and get the game started. I thought everybody had a pretty good handle on things, but when we were finished all the new players said that they had really been lost as far as strategy goes. I hate that, and hope that they'll give it another chance, because it's certainly one of my new favrites.
Score: Me 66, John 61, Chris 45, Mark 44, Sabrina 37
Ratings: Me 9, John 7, Chris 8, Mark 6.5, Sabrina 5
Meanwhile, a few other players came in and started up a session of our Game of the Month!, Taluva. There were some rules mistakes in this game, however, so no data was recorded.
My main event for the evening was my second play of Struggle of Empires! I knew that I only had 2 to 2.5 hours to play, but our first game had only taken about 90 minutes, so I thought I would be safe. Of course, I also didn't properly factor in the difference between a 3-person and a 5-person game either.
Joining in this game were (left to right) Sabrina as the Austrians, John as the Prussians, Alton as the money-grubbing Dutch (United Provinces), Britt as the war-mongering French, and me as the brave and noble British. We managed to make it through the first two wars and into the second action round of the third war before I absolutely had to go. I offered to just pull out and leave my copy of the game so they could finish, but the rest of my fine opponents decided to just call it a learning game so we wrapped it all up.
While I knew that the action rounds would take longer with more people, I didn't count on how much longer the alliance auction would take... or how much money might be spent in it! After the first few rounds, even the new players had a pretty good handle on the basic rules, so we were all able to get right into formulating our plan of attack. We all spent a pretty good amount of time reading about tiles and figuring out our strategy, but no one really stalled the game at any specific time.
When we quit, John was leading and Britt was right behind, but no one was really out of the game.
Ratings: John 9, Sabrina 9, Britt 9, Alton 8.5, Me 9
During SoE, there was another game of Taluva going on, which was won by "Magic" Chris over Mark, Pam, and "Fuzzy" Chris.
Ratings: "Magic" Chris 9, Mark 9, "Fuzzy" Chris 9, Pam 9
As I was leaving, some players were getting all hot and heavy into a series of To Court the King games. In all, there were 5 games (that I have records for anyway) played. "Magic" Chris won three times (with rolls of 7 "3's", 9 "3's", and 8 "6's"), while Mark took one game with 8 "2's" and James took another with 9 "3's".
Ratings: Mark 8, "Magic" Chris 7, "Fuzzy" Chris 10, Brett 8, James 8
After I was long gone, they also played a game of Citadels, which is going to be our Game of the Month! for July.
Alton, returning to his practiced Jedi mind tricks took control and won the game.
Score: Alton 37, Mark 27, Sabrina 23, Britt 21, John 14, Brett 13
Ratings: Alton 9, Mark 8, Sabrina 10, Britt 8, John 5, Brett 7
Yet another BoardGame night that has passed too quickly. Alas, but for more time to play games...
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 30, 2007
It's been a while since I was able to make it to one of these Super Spectacular Saturday Specials, where a group of guys huddle around a massive table containing the magnificence that is Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition. We were hoping for a seven-player game (and the larger board that goes with it), but settled for 5 players after waiting almost an hour for the other guys to show up.
Therefore, this particular epic struggle for control of the galaxy involved:
- Britt, Balemaster of the kindly Xxcha Kingdom (orange)
- Nick, Furher of the fascist Yin Brotherhood (blue)
- Alton, Hegemon of the opportunistic Mentak Coalition (gray)
- John, Chancellor of the Universities of Jol-Nar (purple)
- Myself, Pride-Leader of the peaceful and generous Emirates of Hacan (yellow)
We more or less randomly chose races and seat order, but built the galaxy using standard rules. By the way, since he didn't really want to be "turtlefolk", Britt redesigned his race a little, claiming to instead be a singing and dancing "frog person" not dissimilar to Michigan J. Frog, the long-time WB spokestoad.
I'm not sure what it's called (the "Age of Empire" variant maybe), but we also revealed all the public objectives for the game ahead of time, which were: "All three of my spacedocks are on the board" (1VP), "I now spend 10 influence" (1VP), "I control 5 planets outside of my home system" (1 VP), "I now spend 4 trade goods, 3 resources, and 3 influence" (1 VP), "I am blockading an opponent's space dock" (1VP), "I now spend 3 command counters from my Command and/or Strategy Allocation areas" (1VP), "I won 2 space battles this turn, each in different systems and against at least 3 opposing ships" (2VP), "I Control 10 planets outside of my home system" (2VP), and "Imperium Rex". So we knew the game would last no more than 9 rounds.
We also decided to use the completely alternate set of Strategy Cards from Shattered Empire. So this was what things looked like as the game was getting started:
As is usual, most of us started by just spreading out into the systems close by, conducting some simple diplomacy to settle initial borders and such. Nick was the obvious exception, however, making an all-out rush to claim Metacol Rex. In fact, he pretty much ignored all surrounding systems, allowing Britt to move in and lay claim to planets adjacent even to his home system! Nick responded with deep space PDS fire, but this conflict was quickly resolved with some more diplomatic arrangements.
Each race began doing what it did best. The veggie-headed Universities of Jol-Nar developed tons of technology, the kindly turtlefolk frogpeople of Xxcha worked their diplomatic magic, the underhanded Mentak raided shipping lanes and hoarded resources, the Yin Brotherhood were freakishly aggressive, and the Hacanites concentrated on spreading wealth throughout the galaxy with its shiny new production centers. In fact, in the midst of this stage in the game, Britt's political wrangling led him to propose a law that would prevent anyone from ever invading Metacol Rex. For whatever reason, enough of us either voted for or abstained from the vote and it passed, which would prove to be pretty stupid.
At the midgame, Nick revealed that he had fulfilled his Secret Objective card by controlling Metacol Rex and building up on it pretty dramatically. That threw him into the lead, but because of the aforementioned legislation everyone felt pretty helpless (and, like I said, stupid).
After reading the rules very carefully, we all decided that "Invade" meant only the hostile landing on a planet. So Alton and John took it upon themselves to beat down Nick a little.
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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June 30, 2007 - The Epic Battle Continued...
At this point in the game, I realized that there was no way that I could win by continuing to pursue the "peaceful trading" strategy that I was using. I had accumulated 5 VP, but all the other public objectives and my secret obective (to control all the planets in someone else's home system) were heavily based on military conquest. So I therefore developed my "Master Plan" (TM).
Step 1 involved sowing some local unrest on an undefended system of the Universities of Jol-Nar, my right-sided neighbor. Without firing a shot, I peacefully annexed the planet and quelled the rebellion. I then carefully placed my forces in a way that I hoped would look more defensive, mainly because my main strikeforce was three spaces away from his home system. I took the Warfare strategy card, planning to give that fleet the additional movement it would need to take the home system.
During the strategy phase of round 7, I decided to play "Signal Jamming" on John's only system within range and capable of fortifying his home system. I know this kind of tipped my hand, but I just thought that the benefits of taking that War Sun out of the picture outweighed the chance that he would get too worried. If I could pull this off, I would go to 9 VP (due to my secret objective and the "control 10 planets outside of your home system" objective) and be able to win on the next round by claiming the "spend 3 command counters" objective.
Alas, it was not to be so. John was feeling a bad combination of things. First, he had realized that he was too far behind to win the game, and wanted to make an impact on play even if it would prove to be suicidal. Plus, he was feeling pretty paranoid about my positioning, even though I had not fired a single shot at anyone for the entire game. So, despite being already embroiled in continuing skirmishes elsewhere in the galaxy, he pulled his fleet from Metacol Rex (which included his other War Sun) and struck at my advance fleet occupying his former planet. When it fell, so did my hopes of victory...
A number of things might have changed my fortunes. I can't remember if John had the technolgy to bypass occupied systems, but if not then I should have moved at least one ship into that empty system next to Metacol Rex, which would have prevented the attack. And also, if the Supernova had not been adjacent to his home system, I could have still reached it sith my main strike force and at least been able to claim my secret objective.
Instead, to add insult to injury, Alton came through workhole alpha and stole away one of the planets on my other flank. Conceeding defeat, I therefore just pulled back to fortify my homeworlds.
In round 8, Alton successfully attacked and defeated the fleets in the home systems of both the Xxcha Kingdom and the Yin Brotherhood (see above). He was able to claim both his secret objective and the "2 space battles" public objective to go to 9 VP. Knowing that he would be able to win "officially" on the next round (and because it was 11:00 pm), we all conceeded the game to the Mentak Coalition, which makes the fourth straight TI3 victory for Hegemon Alton.
Final scores: Alton 10, Nick 6, Me 6, Britt 5, John 3.
It was an exceptionally active and challenging session, and everybody had a great time.
Personally, however, I actually dropped my rating for TI down from a 9 to an 8 after this game. Two main problems just rubbed me wrong in the game, the first of which was the galaxy setup. All three times I've played, it always seems like the board is far kinder to some people than others in terms of productive planets being near their home system. I've looked over the Preset Maps optional rule, and I think it could do a lot to fix this problem, however.
The other issue I have is that, as I realized in the middle of this game, there was no other viable path to victory other than military action. For myself, playing the Emirates of Hacan, I would have preferred to play a more diplomatic and mercantile strategy, but instead was constrained (because of the public objectives in play) to what felt like an artificial and racially themeless path. While I realize that the original strategy tiles encouraged "turtling" (no offense Britt), the removal of all other means to accumulate VP's makes the game just as one-dimensional, but simply in the other direction.
We'll see, because I still want to continue to play this huge and epic game, but maybe just not as intensely as I did before.
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Here is the new Meta-List for the continuing adventures of the
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Posted Fri Jun 8, 2007 1:34 am
in the Ottoman Empire during the first war!
Raleigh
North Carolina
This was our biggest game yet with 7(!!!) players. We even got to use the big map...4 rings around Mecatol Rex!
Alton sealed his triumvir's reign with a strong win, holding 6 points at the end of the 5th round---proving that the Clan of Saar (aka the space rats) can be a formidable foe. Nick did well with the Sardakk Norr coming in 2nd with 5 points---great showing in the last round. Carol and I each finished with 3 points, proving that a newbie (Carol) can do well in her first outing and proving that old dogs can still be beaten...again...and again. Carol played trademeisters, the Hacan, and I played the Lizix Mindset (think Tweeky from Buck Rogers on steroids). I was doomed by an intractable foe, an intractable foe without belligerent neighbors and a really bad mix of tiles arounds me. Mark played the humans, going to war with newbie Josh. Josh played the JolNarr. Despite being a techy race, he built a formidable navy...and watched it be dismantled by Mark's humans. Bruce, another newbie, played the Winnu, former custodians of Mecatol Rex. He played quietly, building his forces slowly and unassumingly.
Overall, it was another fun game.
With a solid core of experienced players at Hypermind (about 10 players), we should now begin adding the Shattered Empire expansion rules. Oh the humanity...and inhumanity!
Our next game should fall on Sat, 6/30.
Hear that everyone: Sat, June 30!!! Clear your schedule!
Burlington
North Carolina
Graham
North Carolina
Graham
North Carolina
We, the Hypermind BoardGamers, now have our own guild here on BGG. Go here, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/43 , to look at it and sign up. I've barely scratched the surface of looking at it myself, but I already see several really cool features that will be great for us to use.
Raleigh
North Carolina
We are planning to play TI again on Sat, 6/30. Please join us if you are interested. We will be playing with TI 3d Ed rules with all of the Shattered Empire rules, except Nexus Wormholes.
Also, Warrior Knights will be on our table again soon.