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Fere-con 2007
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So my wife and I hosted a 2-day gaming party in our San Francisco apartment on the Saturday and Sunday between Christmas and New Years. Over the 2 days, we had 50 people over (well 49 and a dog) for a total of about 33 hours of gaming. This was the first thing we'd done something like this (well a couple years ago I hosted a ~40 person poker tournament at a house I shared with a couple other guys), so I learned a lot about how to do it next time. And yes, there will be a next time! Maybe during summer, maybe next year, but as soon as everyone left Hilary (my aforementioned wife) said "ok, what would you do differently next time?"    At first I was writing down everything that was played and the scores, but as the weekend went on, I stopped really doing that (Thing I Learned #1: Have people log their own results), so here, partly from notes, and partly from memory, is what was played over the weekend.
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Posted Wed Jan 2, 2008 9:01 am
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People started showing up on Saturday a little after 10 AM. After 2 folks showed up, we started a game of Ingenius. Soon after we started our friends Jim and Karen arrived with their 2 2-year olds. Hilary excused herself from the game to chat with Karen and perform hosting duties and Jim subbed in for her.
Scores:
Gail - 11
Jim/Hilary - 10/13
Heather - 10/12
Chris - 8
I know I saw this got pulled out again later in the weekend, but I don't know by whom.
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By the time Ingenius finished there were enough folks to split off into a couple games. I got race for the Galaxy just a couple days ago and had perused the rules but not played (or even opened the cards). While I was finishing Ingenious, a couple friends of mine were breaking it out and puzzling through the rules. I joined them and we played through a game. I really enjoyed it. Another person at the party refused to play it because she played it once and "it made her head hurt", but I actually found it to be very well designed. Yes there were lots of symbols, but they all make sense after dealing with them for a few turns.
I was the only one going after military planets, and that seemed to go well for this game as I managed to get the 6 VP and 7 VP planet as well as the development that gives 1 VP/military. Very few VPs were earned by anyone for shipping...err consumption.
Scores:
Chris - 36
Aaron - 32
Mark - 30
Grey - 18
I believe Aaron and Mark played this again on Sunday, but I don't know the results.
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While we played Race for the Galaxy. Some others played Ticket to Ride.
Results:
Ari - 150
Heather - 106
Andrew - 100
Gail - 80
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The Ticket to Ride folks then played 3 games of Dominos.
Game 1:
Gail - 70
Andrew - 38
Ari - 38
Heather - 23
Jennifer - 0
Game 2:
Jennifer - 89
Ari - 70
Gail - 70
Andrew - 69
Heather - 37
Game 3:
Jennifer - 128
Gail - 105
Ari - 102
Andrew - 69
Heather - 65
Geoff - 32
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5.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.76 Overall Rank:25]
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After finishing Race for the Galaxy, I pulled out Ra, a game I really enjoy but only recently aquired. Played with mostly recent arrivals and came in second to a first timer. He's German though, so I guess that's an advantage...
Thorsten - 43
Chris - 40
Grey - 34
Adam - 30
Heiji - 23
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Somewhere around this point an apples-to-apples game started up. I didn't pay much attention to it, but I know that Doug won.
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Puerto Rico got broken out and played.
Heather - 55
Andrew - 49
Gail - 47
Ari - 40
Jennifer - 35
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Some folks I didn't know too well showed up with Power Grid, a game I've wanted to play for some time, but had always just missed out on the opportunity at various game nights. I not only played but won, so that was cool. Neat game. I printed out the expanded player reference sheets from BGG which helped alot. 6 player game. 3 of us powered 15 cities at the end, but I held a cash edge of 56 to 22.
We did screw up the rules a little (the folks who brought it had only played once or twice), in that we weren't cycling the high-value plants back into the deck until about halfway through the game, so several high-value plants got bought probably earlier than they should have.
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Here's where my note taking starts getting sketchy. Maybe something to do with the fact that around now is when I started having a few beers? Nah.
Anyway, a game of Vegas showdown was played. I think there were 4 players, Ari, Carissa, and Heather among them, and they finished 1-2-3.
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We got a Wii for Christmas from my wife's parents and some friends brought over some games and extra controllers. Made a nice thing for people to do between games, though next time I'll try to set up a playing area for it and maybe for movie watching too.
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This was played. I know there was no traitor and the players won.
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I know this got played, but I don't know what happened in it.
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I have Bang and Dodge City, but Doug brought over the bullett. A bang game was played in which the Outlaws won. I think they used all the expansions, but I'm not actually sure.
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My friend Carlos showed up, who is not much of a gamer. I showed him Blokus, and he seemed to enjoy it. I beat him at it. I also played this with Howard and Trevor at various times over the weekend.
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Lunatic brought this over. I'd never played it. It was fun at first, but by the end I feel like I didn't really like it much. I'd play again if someone really wanted to, but I wouldn't go out of my way. I guess what I don't like is that by the end I concluded that the best strategy is to ignore the passenger and just try to construct high-scoring tracks, which makes the main mechanic of the game irrelevant. Perhaps I'm mistaken though.
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Played this for the first time in probably about 7 years. Not that I don't like it, I just don't own it and it hadn't come up. Anyway, I really screwed up my first few turns and in a 4 player game, that turned out to be pretty hard to come back from as I got pretty well boxed in pretty quickly. I'd like to play again as I remember how to play. Heather won the game, with Lunatic coming in second. Carlos (his first game) and I trailed pretty badly.
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17.
Board Game: Taboo
[Average Rating:6.40 Overall Rank:772]
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A game of Taboo was played. My wife played it. Her comment was "why don't you get fun games like this one?" Sigh. Well, she's getting better...
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My high school friends and I have been playing a version of this forever that we call "the name-in-the-hat game", because well, we put a bunch of names in a hat and then people have to give clues to get other people to guess them. After all the names have been guessed, they all go back in the hat and now the clue givers can use only 3 words (plus noises and gestures). After that they go back in and clue givers can use only noises and gestures. A very large game took place while I was playing Settlers and Scrabble. About 16 people, 5 names a piece, which was probably a little much. Don't know who won.
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Another high school favorite. Click the link for a description, but you can probably figure it out if you think about the title. No winners in this one. I missed out while I was playing something else. Power Grid I think.
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Meanwhile, I was playing Scrabble, a game I don't enjoy much face to face. I like it ok over facebook since then you can just play a couple turns a day and you don't need to sit there and watch the other person think. Just too much downtime in this game for me. Anyway, my friend Ben really wanted to play so I did. Afterwards Howard and Michah, who evidently really enjoy the game, played several rounds.
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21.
Board Game: Poker
[Average Rating:6.79 Overall Rank:355]
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Around 1:30 AM or so, everyone left except for me, Howard, and Carlos. The three of us played poker until about 3 AM. Biggest pot had me flopping a set of queens while Howard flopped an ace-high straight, and then I sucked out on him. We were only playing .10/.10 with a $15 buy-in though, so it didn't cost him much.
Carlos actually held his own even though when he bought in he was pretty much resigned to losing his money. I think he just lost a couple bucks.
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On to day two. Woke up at 9:15, dragged myself into the shower, made coffee, and was just ready as guests began to arrive. We were waiting for the 800 pound gorilla (see below) to arrive and we played a game of Double or Nothing, which was won by Heather, with Bertram, Trevor, and myself finishing 2nd, 3rd, and 4th respectively. I love this game as a quick little filler.
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Still waiting for the 800 pound gorilla, I set up Wits and Wagers. Tom and Dorothy actually arrived just as we finished setting up but they joined us as it is a quickie. Don't recall who won, but it wasn't me...
I know my sister pulled another game or two of this together later while I had my head buried in Advanced Civ.
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And here we have the 800 pound gorilla. Tom really wanted to get a game of this going. He predicted it would take 11 hours, and silly me I thought it would be shorter. Tom's wife Dorothy played as well, in addition to myself, Ari, Trevor, Heather, and Bertram. I had just met Bertram about a week before and he just showed up to play whatever and was a very good sport about getting roped into a game that ended up taking pretty much exactly 12 hours to play.
I enjoy Advanced Civ, but this was really the wrong place to play it. There were a lot of distractions, and I ended up feeling pretty cut off from my own party, which was a shame. Next time I play Advanced Civ, it will be with people who are there to play just that. Lesson learned.
As I said after the game, the first 6-7 hours were very fun. That's no mean feat really. At that point, it seemed pretty clear that Dorothy (Babylon) had a pretty commanding lead. 5 hours later Dorothy did indeed win by a mile. Trevor was actually doing quite well, but then a Civil war caused him to have to cede about half his territory to me and he never recovered, and it didn't help me enough to make a serious charge. Scores:
Dorothy (Babylon): 4129
Bertram (Egypt): 3122
Trevor (Crete): 2590
Chris (Illiria): 2453
Ari (Africa): 2031
Tom (Asia): 1798
Heather (Italy): DNF (fortunately the game has rules for what to do if someone quits; no knock against Heather, she did play for about 7 hours and was clearly out of the running when she quit).
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Picked this up from Tanga a while back. Haven't had a chance to play it yet. 6 of my friends tried it. There seemed to be varied opinions as to its quality. It took them longer than I thought from having read the rules (I think nearly 3 hours), but they were all new to it and had to figure out how to play. Still would like to try it out myself sometime.
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Posted Wed Jan 2, 2008 1:18 am
Huge thank you to my wife Hilary, as well as Jim, Karen, Jeremy, Ethan, Heather, Gail, Connie, Tony, Eyad, Lunatic, Bertram, John, Carissa, Trevor, Beth, Garth, Lina, Tom, Dorothy, Vicky, Michah, Heiji, Vicky (another one), Andrew, Alana, Thorsten, Adam, Jennifer, Ari, Ted, Danine, Aaron, Geoff, Mark, Robin, Grey, Doug, Timor, Leslie, Greg, Sara, Andy, Penelope, Simon, my mom, Song-gong, Carlos, Howard, Ben, and Pepper the dog for coming!
Whew
Not quite big enough. Hah. There was a time on Saturday when it was pretty cramped, but actually its a nice big corner apartment and we did some furniture rearrangement that worked out pretty well.