Hypermind BoardGame Night - July 2007
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
Ah... The summer is in full swing, and what could be better in the sweltering, humid North Carolina heat than to sit in the nice cool air conditioning and play some games? This is the July edition of the Hypermind BoardGamers Glog!
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
This is the shiny new meta-list I've created so that we'll have a central place to link that won't change every month. Plus, it will keep me from having to update each new Glog with all the previous months.
Take a look to catch up on where we've been and hopefully see where we're going.
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
The Game of the Month for July is Citadels!
We haven't played a lot of Citadels in the Hypermind BoardGamers, but I think that it's because several of us had some experience with it previously, and we have a bad tendency to play mostly newer games (to us anyway) at our weekly meetings. I think it's going to be a great choice for us, mainly because it is so different from the previous Games of the Month! we've had. It will test a whole different set of gaming skills, and I can't wait to see who will best master them!
Other games considered: Mykerinos, Mission: Red Planet, The Settlers of Catan.
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 3, 2007
This week's Boardgame Night started early, when I arrived at about around 4pm and taught "Fuzzy" Chris how to play Hive. He picked up on the rules pretty quickly, and by our fifth or sixth game he was beginning to give me a run for my money. He definitely liked the game, and I think he continued to play with "Magic" Chris when I left to have supper with my wonderful wife Gwen.
After our fine meal, Gwen and I returned to find that several people had already arrived and were ready to play. I was pleased to finally meet Carol, Britt's fiance, because I had begun to doubt whether she actually existed or not. She was, in fact, not merely a figment of Britt's imagination.
Anyway, it seemed only fitting that we get the evening started by playing our shiny new Game of the Month!, Citadels. There were 10 of us ready to play, so we divided into two groups and played in stereo.
Alton pulled out his copy of the game and was joined by Sabrina, John, Mark, and Chris Ashby (yes... yet another "Dude named Chris"). When it comes to Citadels, Alton is the arcane master of evil Jedi mind tricks, so I doubt that the result of that game was ever in question.
Score: Alton 28, Mark 20, Sabrina 16, Chris Ashby 15, John 14
Ratings: Alton 9.5, Mark 8, Sabrina 9.5, Chris Ashby 7, John 4.5
Meanwhile, at my table were my lovely wife Gwen, the not-quite-as-lovely Britt (pictured above), his lovely fiance Carol, and the ever so handsome "Magic" Chris (plus my own dashing self, of course). I pushed the action and managed to complete my 8 districts first, thinking that taking the initiative might steal the victory away from Gwen and Britt, who had built the more expensive districts. As it turned out, Gwen managed to build her 8th district that same turn, which was also the one color she needed to have one of each, so she took the victory by six points. Britt was also a lot better off than I realized, having built both the University and the Dragon Gate, so we were tied after the final tally.
Score: Gwen 35, Me 29, Britt 29, "Magic" Chris 22, Carol 17
Ratings: Gwen 9, Me 8.5, Britt 8, Chris 8, Carol 8
I really like Citadels, but it seems like every time I play I'm teaching it to new people, so I've never had the chance to try out any of the Dark City expansion personalities or districts. Hopefully we'll get to that over the remaining weeks that it reigns as our Game of the Month!
After both groups finished up, we had another couple of people that had arrived. "Magic" Chris, John, Mark, and Gwen jumped into a game of Arkadia, while Britt, Sabrina, Zack, Chris Ashby, Carol, and Alton started up a 6-player game of The Settlers of Catan.
Arkadia - Scores: John 98, Chris 94, Mark 62, Gwen 53
Ratings: John 8.5, Chris 9, Mark 7, Gwen 7
The Settlers of Catan - Scores: Alton 10, Britt 9, Sabrina 8, Chris Ashby 7, Carol 6, Zack 4
Ratings: Alton 9.5, Britt 9, Sabrina 9, Carol 10
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 3, 2007 (continued)
While the two large games were going on, James and I took the chance to try out a couple of shorter games. I had been wanting to give Tsuro a try for a long time, so we pulled it out, read the rules, and played a couple of games. I managed to win both of them, finding that (for us anyway) winning was mostly a function of keeping yourself alive until your opponent accidently killed himself. It was an okay game, and we both rated it as a 6.
Despite it being the Game of the Month! in June, James had never played Taluva. So I taught him how to play that as well, and we gave it a try. It was a learning game for him, of course, so I managed to win by placing all of my Towers and Huts.
By this time, the game of Arkadia was over, but Settlers was still going strong. We therefore pulled out our favorite stand-by filler, Liar's Dice, and played a round with 6 people. Mark ended up winning with 2 dice left.
Mark then went over and took over for Zack (who had to leave before the marathon Settlers game ended), so we then pulled out a new filler that's been getting a lot of play lately, Ca$h 'n Gun$. James and Gwen were new to the game, but it didn't show, with each one winning one of the two games we played. While it sure is a lot of fun, I don't actually think there is any measurable skill involved at all in the game. Instead, success is usually tied to going unnoticed and people thinking that you're not a threat, which is perfect for new players.
Score (Game 1): Gwen 145k, "Magic" Chris 110k, James 110k, John 45k, Me (-5)k and I was DEAD
Score (Game 2): James 95k, Gwen 85k, Me 75k, John 65k, "Magic" Chris 45k
Ratings: Gwen 6, James 7, "Magic" Chris 6, John 7, Me 6
Once Alton was finally crowned the "Lord of all Catan", we settled down to play one more ending game. I pushed for something long and heavy like Power Grid or Antike (since the next day was a holiday after all), but everybody else wanted to have another run at a huge-mongous game of Liar's Dice.
There were 8 of us in all (that's 40 dice for the arithmatically challenged out there), with the players being Sabrina, "Magic" Chris, Carol, Britt, John, Mark, Nick, and myself. Sabrina and Carol had never played, so we all explained the basic rules to them and then got started. After about 30 minutes of dice-chuckin' fury, it all came down to Chris and Britt...
Britt's smug intimidation must have been too much for Chris, however, for he managed to pull out the win with 2 dice left in his cup. The Ratings for everyone playing Liar's Dice for the evening were: Mark 8, Britt 8.5, Gwen 8, James 6, "Magic" Chris 7, John 7, Sabrina 9, Carol 8.5, Nick 10, and me 8.
That's pretty much it for this week, but I'll end with a picture that's worth a thousand words when it comes to ending up...
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 7, 2007
Another special Saturday edition of the Hypermind Boardgamers!
Instead of planning one big session of Twilight Imperium (third edition), we decided to play a couple of the other "longer" games that we have come to enjoy. Only Alton, Britt, and I were able to come from our "regular" group, but we also grabbed a dude named Julius as we pulled out Warrior Knights and set it up.
Now, Alton and Britt had played the game a couple of times, but I had either been involved in other games or been unavailable during those sessions. So I was in the rare situation of not knowing much of anything about the game before we got started. Britt and Alton were a little rusty on the rules (which I'll come back to later), but I seemed to be able to grab ahold of the basic play of the game pretty quickly.
I was green, and was able to place my stronghold in the bottom-left corner. Britt was red and was situated mainly just "above" me, across the river. Alton was purple and in the opposite corner (upper right), while Julius was black and located just to the right of the center of the board.
As the game started, I made a pretty cool move in holding off on the mercenary draft until a little later. Everybody else spent their first actions getting spots in the first draft while I was attacking the high-crown cities near the center of the board. Then after they all shared the first draft pretty evenly, I was able to grab the three top spots in the second draft (getting a 200 and two 150's). So in the early going I gernered a pretty commanding lead in both influence and in assembly votes (holding onto the Chairmanship for most of the game).
Then comes the point where I got robbed. Britt had mentioned the whole "unattended cities can revolt" thing, but made it sound rather rare. So when we turned over three "Revolt" fate cards for my three largest cities after round 3 or 4, my heart sank. Of course, it wouldn't have been quite as bad if he or Alton had also remembered that you could prevent a revolt by either paying twice its income or a faith counter. So, watching in helpless terror, I saw five of my cities revolt and disappear over the next two rounds.
In the end, I "lost" to Alton by by one influence point. So if even one of those cities had been prevented from revolting, I would have at least tied or probably won the game. Grrrrrrr! That'll teach me to play a game I haven't read the rules for...
Score: Alton 16, Me 15, Britt 13, Julius 6
Ratings: Alton 8, Me 8 (upgraded from a 6 after reading the rules), Britt 8, Julius 9
Incorrect rules aside, I really liked all that was going on in this game. The political and ecclesiastical aspects of the game were very well integrated into the overall game play, and I thought the method of "triggering" the special phases based on which "color" action cards had been chosen was really ingenious. I've read the rules for the Warrior Knights: Crown and Glory expansion, which seems to add some really cool elements to the game, and I can't wait to play (and own) both the base game and the expansion!
Next, we pulled out a game that has quickly come to be one of my all-time favorites, Struggle of Empires. I tried out the Spanish, while Britt took the role of Russia and Alton took my usual place as the British. I got on the bad side of the first alliance, and despite planning to have a "lie low" strategy, I found myself being attacked on all sides during the first war.
"The Original Axis of Evil"
So I was scrapping from the beginning. I therefore decided that my only hope of regaining influence was to field the best army I could, taking the Mercenaries, Militia, Banking, Army Training and Logistics tiles as soon as I could. Britt was playing a really tight game, however, and because I was riding the line nearing 20 unrest, he was able to outbid me in the alliance phase of the last war, putting us together and therefore in a position that I (who shared the most areas with him... and the strongest army of course) couldn't hurt his position. In fact, he won in pretty astounding fashion.
Score: Britt 78, Alton 58, Me 54
Ratings: Britt 9.5, Alton 9, Me 9
Overall, it was another great day of gaming! Can't wait now until Tuesday!
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 10, 2007
I've had a lot going on personally this past week, so I'm a little late in getting the old Glog updated. But anyway, here we go!
This week's BoardGame Night started off in fine fashion as we once again split into two groups. The first bunch pulled out the Game of the Month!, Citadels.
The game was very close... so close that we weren't sure whether there really was a winner. Both Mark and Sabrina tied with 30 points, and the rulebook didn't give any specifications on how to break ties. Never ones to be terribly limited by the rules, we used the obvious tiebreaker of remaining gold, and therefore declared Sabrina the official winner!
Score: Sabrina 30 (and 1 gold!), Mark 30, Pam 26, "Fuzzy" Chris 23, "Magic" Chris 19, Rick 12
Ratings: Sabrina 9, Mark 9, Pam 6, "Fuzzy" Chris 8, "Magic" Chris 8, Rick 7
Meanwhile, the rest of us pulled out Lifeboats for the first time ever. I had picked it up a month or two back, but this was the first time it'd managed to hit the table. Overall, it was a fun and rather chaotic game, but I'm not sure that you can really have any true strategy when playing. Still, if you're looking for an interesting negotiation game, it was very enjoyable.
Score: John 29, Juvae 19, Alton 18, Jen 16, Me 16, Denise 15
Ratings: John 7.5, Juvae 7, Alton 8, Jen 7, Me 7, Denise 7.5
During those games, Carol (who still actually exists) and Britt came in and played a couple of games of Wings of War: Famous Aces. Several of the guys have really been raving about this game, and I hope to give it a try soon. Britt and Carol split their two games, by the way...
Ratings: Carol 7, Britt 8
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 10, 2007 (continued)
For the next round of games, we flipped it up and most of the "Lifeboat Crowd" tried out the Game of the Month! using the Dark City alternate characters. Most of us had never had the opportunity to try any of the personalities, so we just decided to go all-out and used every one of them from the Witch to the Diplomat.
The game was definitely a different beast than we were used to. I built the Museum early, and after seeding it with three other district cards (which give an additional point each at the end of the game), someone tried to steal it with the Diplomat. We really weren't sure if the facedown district cards should go with it, but we figured that they probably would, so we played hot potato with it for the rest of the game. In general, we found that there were several such rules questions that came up because of the new characters and districts, and that not having the Thief and the Warlord made it much harder to really hold people back in the game.
We also found that certain people took a lot longer to make decisions than they did with the base characters (cough... Alton!... cough...) In general, we didn't like using the Dark City characters that much. Next week, we may use one or two (like the Witch for sure), but mainly use the original characters.
Score: Britt 34, John 33, Chip 23, Alton 22, Me 20, Carol 16
Ratings: Britt 8, John 5, Chip 7, Alton 9, Me 8, Carol 7.5
Seeing that it is apparently our abstract strategy game of choice, some other players joined in a game of Taluva. "Magic" Chris has taken command of this game of late, and once again pulled out a victory by placing all of his Temples and Huts!
Ratings: "Magic" Chris 9, Sabrina 6.5, "Fuzzy" Chris 9, Rick 7
With my time running short, I pulled out Mykerinos and recruited a few guys over to give it a play. Chip owns the game but had never played and John was totally new to it, so I gave a quick overview of the rules to everyone. Being that Chris and I both suck at area majority games, however, I guess it was fitting that the two people who had played before would get crushed by the new folks. I had a terrible first season and never recovered, while Chip saved four cubes and got at least as much out of it as I did. I think that Chris and I hurt ourselves by competing too much for Lady Violet areas from the start. Anyway, Chip rode his early lead to victory!
Score: Chip 48, John 41, "Magic" Chris 36, Me 22
Ratings: Chip 8.5, John 7.5, "Magic" Chris 8, Me 8
As I was leaving, the rest of the crowd joined with some of the other people hanging around the store to play a couple of huge games of Liar's Dice.
Alton took the first game with one die left while Mark took the second with an amazing four dice remaining!
Ratings: Alton 9.5, Mark 9, Carol 9, Leslie 7.5, Sabrina 9, Britt 9, Denise 9, Todd 9, Robert 9
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 17, 2007
When I got to Hypermind this week, I went ahead and set up for another playtest of Ascendancy, because we really needed to try out the revised rules. Chip, Chris Ingersol, and I had played in the first playtest, and we added Britt to make a fourth for this week. In the middle of the game, Chris got a turn ahead in scoring and the rest of us just couldn't catch up. I'm not going to go into details about the game, however, because I don't want to give any false impressions about a game that may change significantly before it is published.
Score: Chris 168, Britt 142, Chip 140, Me 139
By this time, pretty much everybody that was going to come was there, which was a little disappointing. In the last two weeks, we've been pushing 14-16 people, but we only had 6 this time. I don't know if it was the spotty thunderstorm activity going on or if it is just everybody's summer vacation/activities competing for the time, but our numbers were way down.
Anyway, we then jumped into out Game of the Month!, Citadels
Having now become at least a little familiar with the Dark City characters, we chose to play with the Witch replacing the Assassin and the Wizard replacing the Magician. Personally, I think that was an excellent decision, because once again I found myself bewitched 3 of the first 4 rounds. So at least I had been able to collect a nice little nest egg of gold while falling under the wiles of a warted old crone. Needless to say, however, that kind of start puts quite a little hitch in your trying to win the game, so I kinda sucked this game as well (which is becoming a common refrain for me in Citadels).
"Fuzzy" Chris got together this crazy combo tha let him discard a cards for gold each turn and then spend 2 gold to draw 3 cards, so he jumped out to a quick lead. This, of course, brought lots of attention from Warlords and such, however, and he had kinda stumbled by the end of the game.
Without his favorite weapon (the Assassin), Alton was unable to claim a staggering victory, which is the usual outcome when he plays. Instead, Chip and Britt once again were fighting for the top spot, with Chip edging out a 2-point lead for the win. It is apparently not a game that Dudes Named Chris do well at, however, as we took the bottom three spots in the game (note that I "came back" and at least managed not to be the biggest loser in the game).
Score: Chip 32, Britt 30, Alton 29, "Fuzzy" Chris 25, Me 21, ("Magic") Chris Ingersol 20
Ratings: Chip 7, Britt 8, Alton 9, "Fuzzy" Chris 8, Me 8, Chris Ingersol 8
My time for evening was running pretty short, so we next pulled out Pirates' Dice/Liar's Dice for a quick 6-person game. I was still pressed for time and didn't take enough time to think clearly, so I got out pretty early. In my mind, Liar's Dice is probably the perfect (and one of the few really playable) dice game, and our steadily increasing average ratings for the game reflect that pretty well. Britt finished out having a pretty good night, winning with 2 dice remaining.
Ratings: Britt 9, Chris I. 9, Alton 9, Chip 9, Fuzzy 9, Me 9
After I was long gone, Britt taught Nick how to play Memoir '44, who then proceeded to kick his heiney in the first playing of the scenario. I don't know if they had to quit the second playing early (because it was 11:30 apparently), but it looks like Britt was leading that one 2-0.
Hopefully we'll have a bigger crowd this coming week, and I'll get to play more than just 2 or 3 games. Arrgghhh! After a record "Games Played" month in June, I'm behind my average so far in July. See y'all at Hypermind on Tuesday!
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 24, 2007
This week at Hypermind we saw attendance pick up a little, but I think we're still suffering from a bit of a summer slump. Anyway, a group of us got there early this week and decided to jump into another session of our Game of the Month!, Citadels.
We've pretty much settled into the character line-up we like best, which replaces the Assassin with the Witch* and the Magician with the Wizard* (* both of these are alternate characters from the Dark City expansion.) We also threw in a couple of the alternate Dark City districts, but they didn't have a huge impact on the game. I've waited too long to write this report to remember many of the details, other than there was one point in the game where I could have played two districts to end the game and win (going "out" first and having all five colors), but John guessed right as the Thief and stole all my money, which totally disrupted my plans that required 6 gold to pull off. As it was, I ended up in the dead middle of the pack, while John pulled out a convincing victory.
Score: John 33, Mark 28, Me 25, Pam 21, Chris Ingersoll 21
Ratings: John 6, Mark 8, Me 8, Pam 7, Chris 8
About 10 minutes after we got started, Chip, Britt, and Alton rolled in. Both Chip and I had brought our copies of China, so they took that as a sign and Chip taught the other two how to play.
Now, Chip has played like 137 million (imagine Dr. Evil saying that with his pinky to the corner of his mouth, by the way) games of Web of Power on BSW, he's like some kind of area-majority savant, and the other guys were new, so he pretty much wiped the floor with them in 2 different games. But the game is so quick and, IMHO, has so much depth that I think it's a great little game.
Game 1: Chip 55, Alton 38, Britt 35
Game 2: Chip 57, Alton 35, Britt 35
Ratings: Chip 9, Alton 7, Britt 6.5
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 24, 2007 (continued)
At this point in the evening, we entered into "all request hour". "Magic" Chris Ingersoll had a request to bring Cosmic Encounter, while I had a similar request for Tigris & Euphrates.
Chris, Alton, Mark, and John got together and assembled Chris' copy of the stunning Mayfair edition of the game. The "alien powers" drawn by each player were as follows: Alton was the "Clone", John was the "Amoeba", Mark was the "Loser" (note interesting ironic foreshadowing here...), and Chris was the "Symbiote". Alton and John had never played before.
I have no idea how the game went (maybe one of those guys can give a better rundown for us), but Mark won convincingly.
Score: Mark 5, John 3, Alton 2, Chris 2
Ratings: Mark 7, John 7.5, Alton 8, Chris 10
Meanwhile, I taught my second favorite game, Tigris & Euphrates (a former Game of the Month!), to Britt (the requester), Chip, and Pam. Like most of Reiner Knizia's games (and a heck-load of other eurogames), the game is a lot more complicated to explain than to play, so it took a little while to get everything straight. The game then played pretty slowly, mainly due to the fact that Britt and Pam were seep into the clutches of Analysis Paralysis. Usually, I haven't found games of Tigris & Euphrates to be to bad as far as downtime and AP goes because it's pretty easy to plan ahead with turns being as short as they are, but the complexity of play apparently got the best of them this time (and Britt said I kept taking his moves).
Britt's slow play induces a near comatose state in Chip
I used a new strategy in this game that I hadn't really tried before, by the way. Maybe because I kinda know what I doing now, I was able to at least keep track of the colors that other players had a bunch of, and on at least two or three occasions I engineered situations where they could reap a significant harvest of that same color but keep them poor in the colors they still needed. Despite this, however, I still never seem to feel like I'm doing well in this game.
I started out well in all colors except black, which I had none of until midway into the game. I like to concentrate on building and capitalizing on monuments, so I put down at least 2 or three in the game. At one point, Britt (being pretty much out of the race in his own evaluation) just caused a big external conflict that literally wiped Chip off the board. I was unaffected, however, and managed to strengthen my hold over the monuments that would give me what I still needed. In the end, I pretty much dominated, finishing with a very strong and well-balanced score...
Score: Me (11G,11R,12U,14B), Chip (6B,7G,9U,9R), Pam (5U,12G,13B,13R), Britt (4U,5G,7R,8B)
Ratings: Me 10, Chip 8, Pam 7, Britt 7.5
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 24,2007 (continued even farther...)
While our incredibly slow game of Tigris & Euphrates was still in progress, John taught the rest of his table how to play Primordial Soup. Now, all I know about this game personally is that you eat other people's poop, so my knowledge of it is rather limited. Mark, Chris, and Alton were also new to the game, but it didn't keep them from playing a very close game.
Score: John 44, Mark 42, Alton 40, Chris 33
Ratings: John 9, Mark 8, Alton 8, Chris 8
My time was once again running short, but Chip had brought along one of my favorite quick little games, Animal Upon Animal. Pam had to go, but we pulled Juvae over and all took turns placing cute little wooden animals into some very compromising positions. I came in second in like 3 of the four games we played, but Juvae and Britt ended up winning two games each.
Ratings: Britt 7, Chip 8, Juvae 10, Me 8
We almost started to discuss what should be our next game of the month, but then realized that next week will be the 31st, so we'll cover that later. Hopefully, more of our regulars will be able to make it next time, but either way I just can't wait!
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 31, 2007
We had another rather modest crowd this week, but we managed to get quite a bit of gaming in. To start off the evening, Chris Ingersoll and I arrived early and he wanted to try out a 2-player game of Arkadia. This game is one of my favorite "new" games, so I was happy to oblige him...
Once again, I will emphasize how completely different this game feels with 2-players as compared to 3 or 4. I really like how strategic it is with two; that you can make a plan and be reasonably confident that you will have opportunity to put it into action. With more players, it becomes much more of a tactical and opportunistic game, filled with lots more chaos as you can never be sure what the board and/or castle will look like when it gets back to you.
So anyway, I kicked his butt. At one point, Chris made a really strong play, cashing in a bunch of olive seals for 5 gold a piece. Unfortunately, I was able to place one more olive castle piece on my turn and cash in a good amount of the same tokens at a rate of 6 gold a piece. And then, of course, I was able to collect a tower of red tokens to cash in at the end of the game as well to "seal" my victory.
Score: Me 153, Chris 116
Ratings: Me 8.5, Chris 9
A few other people had shown up as we finished out game, and we decided to play a couple of games of Diamant to kill time in case others were on the way.
In both games, the first expedition was over before anyone really had the chance to collect any gems (dern poison gas!). I, being the bravest and most daring, managed to rack up the win in the first game, while John rode an early windfall to victory in the second.
Game 1: Me 40, Pam 34, Chris 28, Mark 9, John 9
Game 2: John 41, Me 33, Chris 29, Pam 24, Mark 23
Ratings: John 7, Me 8, Chris 9, Pam 8, Mark 9
-
-
Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
-
July 31, 2007 (continued)
At this point in the evening, I pushed the agenda a little to play one of my favorite games that I haven't gotten to the table in months. Shadows over Camelot is such a cool and evocative game to me; I love the theme and think that the way the cooperative (knights) vs. game (evil forces) elements work together really captures a great sense of drama and tension during play.
So anyway, I had to explain the rules since three people had never played. We did play with a traitor, but Pam (one of the new people) had that role and didn't know exactly how to go about betraying us, so that didn't really play a big part in the game.
With 9 seige engines on the board, two more quests on the verge of failure, and a traitor still as yet unmasked, we managed to finally complete the Grail quest for a 7 white sword to 5 black sword win.
Ratings: Me 9, Alton 7, Chris 7, Pam 7, Chip 6.5, John 6, Mark 9
While we were still battling the forces threatening to crush Camelot, Denise was teaching a young family how to play Ticket to Ride.
They played an abbreviated learning game, and son Evan was leading mom (Jenna) and dad (Jeremy) when they had to wrap it up. Predictably, they were pretty impressed with the game and ended up walking out of the store a while later with a shiny new copy under their arm. Hopefully, we'll see them at another BoardGame night in the future!
Apparently, I have some issue with telling time (I didn't think they let you out of elementary school without that valuable skill, but somehow I must have slipped through). All evening, I kept thinking it was an hour later than it was in reality, so I pushed for a quick little filler to "fill" what I thought were my last 30 minutes of the evening. Chip pulled out another of his excellent collection of children/family games, and we tried out Pick Picknic.
Pick Picknic is a quick little guessing/bluffing game with sort of an area-majority scoring element. Whatever it is, however, I sucked at it. We played two games, and while it was pretty entertaining, the level of blind guessing and total random luck (in card draws and dice rolls) got a little old.
Game 1: Chip 45, Chris 27, Alton 26, Me 25, John 18, Mark 12
Game 2: Chris 36, Alton 28, Mark 26, Chip 21, Me 16, John 8
Ratings: Chip 7.5, John 6, Mark 6, Chris 5, Me 5, Alton 6
During the second game, of course, I figured that it was only approaching 9pm instead of 10pm, so I then pushed for us to try out a game with a little more depth and length. I bought Power Grid six or so weeks ago and hadn't been able to play it yet, so I recommended that we try out the "learning" game (just Step 1, to 7 cities).
Ironically, after feeling an hour "early" all night, I ended up leaving later than I should have because the game ran longer than I expected. I actually handed off my (very weak) position to Denise, but the game apparently ended soon after I left. Being a learning session, it was a little hard to figure out what people really felt about it during play. In general, however, their ratings were rather favorable, and I hope that we can get in a "real" game pretty soon (preferably with less than 6 players so it won't last forever).
Score: Chip 7 (cities powered), Chris 6, John 6, Mark 5, Alton 5, Me/Denise 4
Ratings: Chip 7, Chris 7, John 8, Mark 9, Alton 9, Me 8
Well, you may have noticed that we didn't play the Game of the Month! (Citadels) this week, which is the first such oversight since we started the program. It wasn't like we chose not to because we were tired of it or anything, though. Instead, I just forgot to bring my copy, Britt couldn't make it this week, and Alton didn't think to bring his copy either (and we're the only ones that own it). So, we'll just pretend that we meant to take the fifth Tuesday off from GotM and go about our business.
Speaking of the Game of the Month!, by the way, we also voted for next month, and our choice was another Reiner Knizia classic, Ra. Come and join us in August for an auction-filled good time!
-
-
|
|
Come visit me at GamerChris.com for all sorts of chewy, gamery goodness!
I hope you get to feeling better!
Raleigh
North Carolina
The Hypermind Boardgamers renewed our love affair with T.I. today with the closest game that we have ever played. The game went to the wire, and each player could have won the game.
We had a slightly smaller group than average, 4 players:
Britt - Barony of Letnev
Alton - Mentak Coalition
Nick - Federation of Sol
Mark - Hacan Emirates
We played the game using the Shattered Empire strategy cards and rules for space mines, shock troops, etc. We also used the Distant Suns rules.
Having had some disappointing results with universe building, we tweaked our game setup. After receiving a random assortment of tiles, we built our universe. After building the universe, we randomly rolled for our seating our map. Thus, we did not know where we would be located in the universe when the map was being created. This led to a very balanced map, where no one was left on an island without nearby planets. After creating the universe, we randomly chose 2 races, keeping 1. If a player did not like either race, he could return both and choose 2 other random races, keeping 1 from this selection. With our races chosen and universe created, we began.
Having never played with the Distant Suns option, we were in for a treat...both good and bad. For Nick, he would be the first to encounter the random events hidning behind the Domain counters. His humans headed towards the Mentak Coalition and a system of 2 planets. Upon revealing 1 of the Domain counters upon a ground invasion, Nick stirred up a hornet's nest of local's fighters that were unhappy that Nick wanted to annex their planet. Both local fighters destroyed Nick's carrier and destroyer. The other invasion combat went better than the first, but Nick's loss appeared debilitating.
Alton next encountered neutral planets, but his encounter went positively. Realizing that one had better take substantial forces to combat the neutrals, Alton landed a large force. The first planet was a peaceful annexation, and better than that, Alton receives a spy to check another Domain counter.
After this, conquering neutrals carried a thrill, and the SE Diplomacy strat card's option for peaceful annexation became very important. Mark built a large navy and spread quickly. Despite his losses, Nick sped into Mecatol Rex. Nick and Alton agreed to a truce line, and Britt built slowly, taking adjacent systems first. Britt's main thrust early was developing war techs, and he quickly grabbed the War Suns tech. Mark, however, built the game's 1st War Sun. Shocking to Mark, Britt built 2 War Suns in 1 turn!
Nick and Mark were Britt's neighbors, but a wormhole also connected Alton's empire to Britt's systems. Because of this, Alton advanced 3 drednaughts and a cruiser to the wormhole in case of attack. Nick vacated Mecatol Rex in anticipation of an attack by either Mark or Britt. Before leaving, Britt played an action card sabotaging Nick's production. Britt then swept into Mecatol Rex. Not long after, Britt jumped through the wormhole with a giant force of War Suns, Drednaughts and endless fighters. Alton's force on the other side was dismantled, and it appeared that Britt would drive Alton before him. Britt's nickname of "warmonger" seemed to be proving true once again, despite his arduous cries that he did not exemplify the nickname.
The Assembly card became important as new laws were haggled over and the Speaker token switched hands mid turn repeatedly. New laws reduced the cost of red techs and raised the cost of other techs and so forth. It was a heady day in the Great Halls of the Mecatol Rex Assembly.
Using his control of Mecatol Rex, Britt played Usurper and later named himself the Voice of the Council (1 victory point). All of the players jockeyed for position, taking victory points by capturing planets or having certain technologies. They also maneuvered to capture the Lazax Armory and the other special objectives. By midgame, Alton held 4 points, while Mark had 3, Britt 3 and Nick 1.
After a dinner break, we resumed. Nick had bolstered his navy with technology. His carrier capacity was increased to 8, and he had been steadily building a gigantic land army and fleet of fighters. He did not have War Suns, and he had only 1 Drednaught, but Nick's force was a force with which to be reckoned. Britt and Alton settled into an unsteady peace (more like the early games' Cold War in space). Alton turned his sights on Mark, who had built up a large navy with his trading empire, but Mark was unprepared for the initial assaults. Alton took 2 outlying planets in Mark's empire, and Mark martials his forces to repulse Alton. Alton also attacks Nick's farthest most planets. These attacks were intended solely to capture victory points, rather than lead to outright war between Alton and his 2 neighbors. Alton did not reinforce his gains.
Britt readied for what he thought would be the game-winning blows. Having attacked Mark to capture one of the Special Objectives, Britt was going to sweep through the asteroid field and capture another planet from Nick. This would allow Britt to capture the 10th point. That never happened. Nick played an action card that robbed Britt of his last Command Pool counter. Britt was dead in the water for the turn.
Nick began to grab the Warfare II card, and he used it to strike through the wormholes. Nick plunged into the heart of Mark's empire, grabbing 2 planets and destroying space docks. Then Nick used the High Alert token to speed into Mecatol Rex from Sol. Outgunning Britt's token force, Nick landed scores of troops. Mecatol Rex belonged to Sol, and Nick fulfilled his secret objective. Nick had engineered a stunning comeback, screaming from 3 points to 8 points in a matter of 2-3 turns. Each player had 8 points each when this happened. The gritting of teeth was deafening. This was anyone's game to win!!!
Each player eyed each other greedily, while analysis paralysis ground the game to a snail's pace. How would the game end??? Alton attacked Mark again, taking 2 planets in ground combat. During the Status Phase, Alton would take 1 of the Stage II objectives. After much deliberation by Britt (during which the other players napped), Britt vacated the Special Objective that he had taken from Mark earlier in the game. Mark had captured Nick's Crown of Emphidia (voted on in the current turn's Assembly) and taken his 9th victory point. Britt played Kingmaker as he stepped aside, and Mark sped to take the special objective. Victory point #10 was Mark's, and the end of the Hegemon's (Britt's nickname for Alton b/c of Alton's 4 straight TI wins) reign was complete.
Final Standings:
Mark - 10
Alton - 8
Britt - 7
Nick - 7
The consensus among our group was that setup and Distant Suns rules were fantastic, and they will definitely be part of our regular games. We mixed the SE and original public objectives, and they turned up a very balanced objectives deck.
Overall, TI just keeps getting better and better with each play. Each player brings something new to the game each time with each new map and each new race. What a fabulous game, and I cannot wait to play again....SOON!!!
_____
I forgot to mention that Alton mentioned that he would have rightfully earned 10 points before Mark had I not "given away my special objective to Mark".
A small fiddle can be heard somewhere in the distance.
By the way, next TI game on Sat 8/4 (this Sat)???
North Carolina
Burlington
North Carolina
Thank you Nick for placing the third artifact close to my home system.
Sorry that I cannot defend my title after knocking off the Alton the Great (however, all empires must come to an end). It was a great game for only the third time playing it. The Distant Suns added a good element to the game by making the more aggresive races to be cautious.
Have fun on 8/4/07. My ancestors will be sipping martinis watching you guys fight it out.
-Mark
Raleigh
North Carolina
Raleigh
North Carolina
Our next game of TI starts at 10!
We should be 6 strong.