Slacking

So I’ve been slacking on keeping up with my entries here, so I figured I would do an all encompassing entry of things I’ve been playing lately and have enjoyed.  Deck building has been a common game type with Dice Masters, Quarriors and Dominion playing large roles.

I enter my first official tournament of any kind last week, for Dice Masters.  And I won!!  I was fully expecting to get my ass kicked thoroughly and it turned out that I put together a winning combo.  I used Jocasta and an action card to ping myself for damage, which was then redirected to the opponent.  The first opponent I faced unfortunately for him created a deck that played right into this.  Every time he went to do damage I never took it and redirected it back at him.  Clean victory, no problems at all.  Then I faced off against a guy who clearly plays a lot and has high knowledge of the game.  He was very helpful in making sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong and teaching me a bit about what I should and shouldn’t be doing.  I used the basic action/Jocasta combo and kept pinging him.  I got him down far enough that I was able to just push everyone forward and finish him off.  He also had the unfortunate luck (or lack thereof) of not rolling anything he needed.  Just couldn’t get his engine off the ground.  It happens in dice games and I was happily the beneficiary this time.  Last opponent beat me up.  I ended the game with him at 4 life points, but it only took him two turns of damage to kill me.   He was a very good player and an even nicer guy.  I won $15 in store credit and an extra promo card.   I’m excited to head back down to the store for the next tournament and see how I fair on my second time around!

Quarriors! has been the other Eric Lang game that I’ve been really into lately.  It’s a dice pool building game very much in the vain of Dice Masters (although it was released before DM).  Steve and Johnny both own it, and I’ve been able to play Steve’s copy multiple times.  There’s a pool of creatures and spells and you use energy (i.e. money) rolled on dice to buy those creatures/spells and then cycle through your dice pool to field creatures and do damage to other’s creatures.  If your creature(s) survive and entire round they gain ‘glory’ (i.e. victory points) and the first to X glory wins.  The dice are awesome, the cards are different, and with the way the cards interact with the dice, the expansion possibilities are pretty endless.  Great concept, great game!

Lastly Dominion has been popping up a bunch lately.  THE deck building game, one that really started the hype around the genre is still going strong.  I am an absolutely awful Dominion player but I find it exciting and fun.  The pace is also incredibly quick, which is nice after playing games that take a while in between turns.I need to read, examine and formulate a plan off of the cards a lot quicker, I find myself constantly going ‘ooooh, duh’ later on in the game on combos that would have worked so much better than what I was trying.  I’m still getting the hang of everything there, but I have confidence that it will come if I keep playing enough.  I plan on that happening.  Only ‘complaint’ I have is the utter lack of theme.  It’s kind of remarkable how lame the theme is here, and how it holds no tie in to the game.

I got to play another game of Caverna! And was able to come away with the victory over Chuck and ridiculous questing.  I mean I don’t think he ever acquired something in a normal fashion, everything came from questing actions.  We’ve discussed at length how different our approaches are to games in general, but specifically worker placement.  I would never be able to keep up with all of the moves he makes and the complicated nature of his moves.  On the other hand I tend to play the simple quick and straight forward moves.  Maybe one day i’ll try for the seemingly over complicated, but I think i’ll stress hard while trying.  Until then Chuck and I will probably continue our differing thoughts on game play strategies.

I’ll have some more games I’ve recently played put up in another post, Broom Service, X-Wing Minis in particular I’d like to write up a little about.

7/28/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played:  Guild Hall, Castles of mad King Ludwig

Kenny, Joe and I played a rather quick game of Guild Hall.  It’s a set collection game where the characters have abilities and the 5 colors for a character complete the sets.  You play to 20 victory points which you acquire from turning in sets.   It wasn’t really the type of game I enjoy most.  Nothing in particular wrong with the game, just something I don’t particularly enjoy.  Simple as that, not much else to say about it.  I’d play it again, but wouldn’t suggest it to the table.  Joe won, it was a two horse race with Kenny.  I wasn’t too far behind, but behind  enough that I had very little chance.

After we played an 8 player team bluffing game that was forgettable at best.  Each team needed to get three of a particular item.  You had to complete this as a team, but you don’t know who your teammates are.  So to find that out, you ‘duel’ others, and the winner gets to look at the losers card, either item or faction.  Winner is decided by a straight table vote.  One of the biggest problems I had with this game was lack of ways to get items, which is how you win.  There just weren’t enough ways to get more out of the deck.  After that the theme was close to non-existent, and overall just kind of bland.  I’m also not a huge bluffing game fan, as I think I’m an easy read.  So 2-for-2 in game types I don’t particularly enjoy.   Oh well, it happens sometimes.  My side lost, although it was pretty close.

I jumped into a game of Castles of mad king Ludwig after this.  Playing with all new people to me, Mike, Will and Rob.  They’re around the shop enough, they usually play Sentinels in the front of the store.  They had all played once before, I had never played.  The spacial awareness you need is fun, also placing bought tiles.  The game works very well.  I’m very excited to play again.  I liked that there were shared victory conditions that everyone could compete for and then there were also individual conditions on cards that are hidden from the other players.  Also that the first player determines the cost for each piece and then receives the money for purchased tiles makes it a bit of a thinking game, too.  You have to place tiles just right so that the one you want/need is not too expensive when it comes back around to you.  One thing I did not particularly love was scoring as you score on every placed tile.  It’s not the scoring itself but the upkeep of it, it’s easy to forget to score yourself for whatever reason.  Other than that, not much to complain about, very very good game.

7/26/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played: Dice Masters, Dead of Winter, Cyclades

Chuck and I got a game of dice masters on Sunday afternoon, he ran me through the table and beat me silly with his Gobby strategy.  It was basically a situation of he’s played before and I have not.  I think that’s the entire reason he whooped on me.  I don’t think I even got an attack on him in.  I needed to get more sidekicks out to block.  But also need to ramp up faster with some more energy and have less dice.  Basically I din;t clear my junky dice to make way for the more powerful.  I have a couple of theories I would love to start testing and getting better at, and would also can’t wait for me Age of Ultron stuff to come in and expand my collection.

After he was done playing at the other table Brian hopped in and played some Dead of Winter with us.  We played a three person full co-op game on hardcore mode.  We won, but cut it close for sure.  Brian is a really good gamer and knows what’s going on pretty quickly.  It’s pretty nice to have him on your side.  This particular game had us really heavy on characters and dice.  It was nice to have so many actions in a turn.  That also leads to more barricades being built which are always helpful.  The story telling in the game is fantastic and a lot of fun.  I really like it a lot and hope to get it to the table far more often.

Last game of the night was Cyclades.   I’m not sure how I feel about this game after a single play.  I know it’s a good game.  It feels pretty balanced, and it was close the entire time.  Brian came out strong and continued.  he botched a turn but I kinda have this feeling that he pulled  a punch or two.  There are definitely parts I don’t like, like the monsters and how they refresh and then how there’s one to break every single rule that exists.  Also, it’s really hard to do actions as only one person can do each (based on which God you win and then back), so if you miss one, you are forced to wait for him/her to reappear to use.  The only other way is through the monsters.  I ended up winning but I hoarded cash and then used it to scroll through the deck of monsters until I found what i needed.  So overall I acknowledge it’s a good game, despite a couple of thing I don’t particularly like, but in the end I’m not sure I had a ton of fun playing it.  Perhaps it’s just not my style of game, maybe it was this game in general, and maybe it was just the night we were playing. We’ll see.

7/21/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played:  Coup, Pandemic, Euphoria

Matt brought by Coup with his wife so while waiting for others to arrive and some others to finish up their game we played a quick game of Coup.  We are quite an honest group and the bluffing was light.  Matt’s wife kicked out asses and came away with the victory.  I at one point had 2 Duke’s in my hand and attempted to have others call me out on it.  Eventually I was assassinated and had no counter.  That was the end of me…  Coup is fun, although bluffing isn’t my strong suit, I tend to be too honest or too easy to read.

Johnny picked up Pandemic and Power Grid, so we broke out his new Pandemic to give it a whirl.  We played on hard difficulty with 5 epidemic cards and we were doing a pretty good job of limiting outbreaks and mitigating cubes in general.  I played the medic and Johnny the dispatcher,. it made for a good team-up.  Jared had the scientist so cube couldn’t be placed in areas adjacent to him, we did well, but just not well enough.  I don’t remember Chuck’s role all too well.  In the end we were overcome by outbreaks, but did have all the necessary tools to win, but couldn’t get them to the right places.  Man is Pandemic a hard game sometimes.  I have won with 5 epidemics, but it was close, I don’t know how people could win with 6 in the deck.

To end the night we busted out Euphoria.  I was really excited to try this again, without using double as extra placements and with a new strategy.  So of course I was dealt the same starting alignment card, so I kinda had to do something similar in using water.  Johnny won, but only after I kind of handed him the win.  I didn’t have much of a shot at the end, but I didn’t realize I could’ve prevented Johnny from winning for a couple of more turns.  I ended up playing for me, and lost anyway.  This is still an awesome game, I want to play it more and get much better, and eventually try a new strategy.  Hopefully I’ll get there soon.

Last thought, I bought out Saleena’s Dice Masters set.  I’m going down the rabbit hole, but hopefully not too far.  Chuck is interested in playing so I know I have that built in opponent, but I wan tot get Rob into it even more.  Quick 20 minute games 1v1 should be easy to get to the table come winter time, and I know he’ll play anything Marvel related, so here’s to hoping on the front!

7/14/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played: Hanabi, The Resistance, Euphoria, Royals, Red7

When I arrived, there weren’t many people there yet.  Steve and Brian were sitting; Kenny and his buddy walked in right behind me.   We decided to give Hanabi Deluxe a whirl.  The tiles are absolutely gorgeous.  I didn’t particularly like having to display them in front of me, rather than having the cards in my hand, but they were cool to play with still.  We did rather poorly, in the high teens.  I personally find the game very difficult when you don’t play with the same people often enough.

Then we started a quick game of Resistance while awaiting a few other to arrive.  There were 8 of us and I’m 100% certain that it was the best and worst game of it ever.  The good guys won in three straight rounds, but the spies had at least 2 guys in every single round, and 3 in a round too.  They didn’t communicate at all, apparently and provided a good solid laugh for everyone at the table.  I’ve never seen that before, don;t think i’ll ever see it again.

Chuck wanted to break out Euphoria, and since it’s worker placement and resource-management, sign me up!  The goal of the game is to get all 10 of your influence markers on the board first.  It uses dice as workers and pips on the dice as a measure of intelligence.  Seeing as you are working in a dystopia you want dumb workers, so lower numbers are betters.  If the pips in your non-placed worker pool exceed 15 (16 or higher) you must give back your highest numbered worker to the supply.  You place your stars (influence) on by opening markets with other players, or trading resources and artifacts (cards) in for direct placement.  The game feels really good.  It moves quickly and feels logical.  One of the things that I don;t like (along with a few others at the table) is how luck plays in.  If you roll doubles on workers, you may place them both on your turn rather than a normal placement.  If you end up rolling doubles a few times, you could theoretically dominate the game fairly easily.  It just saves so much time.  I think in my next game I need to rely much less on the markets and use the spaces that allow for bumps much more.  Being bumped prevents you from needing to take guys off and take a small penalty, and also limits the number of turns wasted by removing workers.  Excited to play this game again, outside of it’s very good game play and theme, the artwork was fantastic!

 

Next I hopped into a game of Royals with Matt, Catherine and Anthony.  Royals is a cube based area control game much like Ticket to Ride, in that you draw cards that show where you can place cubes.  You gain victory points by being the first in a city, the first into every city in a particular country, by placing on each of the royal figures, and then after each round (when deck runs out).  End game has one more component to scoring which involves having the most cubes on each royal.  It was simple and fun, I very much enjoyed it.  I beat Catherine by a few points 87 to 84 I think, or something close to that.  Being the first to get one on each Royal was huge to my score.  I’m unsure if you would need this and Ticket to Ride in your collection, but both are definitely independent games.  On a separate note, I really enjoyed the table talk during this game.  Matt is a good guy and has a pretty good sense of humor, easy to talk with, easy to get along with.  Anthony and Catherine are also awesome, I’ve now played a few games with them, including Catherine’s Nyctophobia playtesting.   I wish every game I played could have that sort of banter, giving each other shit and laughing constantly.

The same four of us finished up the night with a quick game of Red7.  Catherine beat us down, but unfortunately we only got in a single hand before the night was over.

7/7/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played:  Gravwell, Caverna: The Cave Farmers

While awaiting others arrival Gravwell hit the table.  Both Chucks and I played, and it went smoothly and quickly.  It’s so simple, but the strategy could get pretty deep.  I think it does a great job filling its niche in gaming.  Really short, really simple and fun.  I wouldn’t hesitate to put it on the same level as Red7, in terms of length to strategy ratios.  Chuck won, but it was really close with older Chuck and I only a couple of spaces behind.  I would definitely play again.

Then we were deciding to play something else and Dave overheard us talking about Caverna.  He had an unopened demo copy that had been sitting on the shelf for a few years now.  After enjoying (seriously) the thrill of punching new chits and sorting pieces, Chuck, Steve, Johnny and I played.  With this being my second Caverna game in 3 days I wanted to try something totally different than what I had on Sunday.  My plan was to ignore questing at all costs and attempt to get the room that gives you a bonus 8 points at the end of the game.  Well I wasn’t the only one with this strategy, Johnny (and Steve) also tried this.  Johnny beat me to the cave room, and that’s a big 8 points to be missing.  Since Chuck was the only one that went questing he was able to get those spaces with impunity and while not dominating, had no hindrance to his game.  Chuck ended up beating Johnny by something like 7 points, while Steve and I were a good 20-30 points behind them.  They both were in the mid-80s, I had 59 and Steve-52(?).  Johnny went animal heavy, and used the ‘use less wood to build fences’ room to great effect.  He did not fill up his entire board, which is something I can happily say I have done in both games.  I’m still in love with this game and am very excited to add it to my collection soon!

7/5/2015 – Chris’ Place

My End Game Winning Board

Games Played:  Red7, Master Thieves, Shadows Over Camelot, Caverna: The Cave Farmers

After a short 12 hour break i was right back at Chris’ place for some Sunday gaming.  Chuck and Johnny couldn’t make it, so we were the only carryovers.  Saleena, Steve, other Chuck, Trisha and Tom all made it down, which put us at the always kind of awkward number of 7.  Do you split into two games of four and three players?  Do you try to find a 7 player game?  There aren’t a huge number of 7 player games, and even then they usually take a really long time.  So after the usual Red7 filler, we started out with Master Thieves.  It holds up to 8, and turns are really short, so it was a great fit.  Also, everyone’s brains are fresh so the burning that come with this game wouldn’t overwork us.  I enjoy this game much more with a greater number of people, in particular the smuggler/detective dynamic takes a whole other level.  I dominated this game and won by a ton of gems, but at least two high score drawers were handed right to me, so that skewed it a bit in my favor.  I think everyone enjoyed it, and definitely showed people a different type of game.  I will always break out Master Thieves when I can.

Still hanging out with 7 players, we wanted to make sure get everyone in the same game.  The most logical option was Shadows Over Camelot.  Steve wound up being the traitor and was close a few times towards the end of the game to winning, but we were able to overcome him and take him down for good!  He was never going to come close on the black swords, so catapults was his best option.  I enjoyed the game, it was simple enough and the game has some great things going on.  But I really disliked the ‘I can’t tell you exactly what number I have on a fight card’.  Maybe I was just meta-gaming too much, but it was easy to skirt this rule and made it just seem tedious.  I don’t really see where it adds value to the game, the only logical place is that it helps the traitor not be exposed as the traitor, but I think there are more effective means, by ya know, simply lying or stretching the truth.  Being the traitor would be very difficult in a large player game, at least that’s how I see it.

Tricia and Tom left after Shadows, and we were down to 5 people.  Saleena had Caverna in her bag, and I pushed a little bit to get it to the table.  I know Steve and I were really wanting to play for a while, and boy did it live up to my expectations, and then exceeded them.  It was fantastic.  Everything felt open enough, there were enough actions for everyone and the changes made from Agricola made it less stressful.  There are still tons of meaningful decisions to make, but if someone took my actions, I could pay a premium to use an action already taken by someone else, or choose a myriad of other actions.  Less resources to gather and combined tiles in particular felt right to me.  I can’t wait to add this to my collection.  It will be there soon enough.  The picture at the top is of my final board.  I won with a score of 75, Chuck coming in second with something in the high 60s.  The other three fell in line not too far behind.

7/4/2015 – Chris’ Place

Games Played:  Red7, Master Thieves, Rampage, Power Grid, Legendary: Marvel, Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar

July 4th Gaming at Chris’ place.  He wanted to host a full day of gaming, and that’s what we did!  Chuck, Johnny and I all showed up around 1PM and played until about midnight, got a lot of gaming in.

While waiting for Johnny to show up we tried our hand at the Advance Version of Red7.  This allows you to draw cards if the card you discard is greater than the quantity of cards in your tableau.  I really liked it as it meant you didn’t have to think end strategy when your cards were passed to you.  Adds a couple of extra rounds and allows you to set some extra stuff up.  Overall positive addition, I expect to play it more in the future.

Then we jumped into a round of Master Thieves.  Neither Chris nor Chuck had the opportunity to play, and I know Chuck in particular was really wanting to give it a whirl.  Chuck and I left Johnny and Chris in the dust.  I believe we tied, but this game is never about winner nor losing, just about having fun fooling around with the box.  Always stoked to be able to bust Master Thieves out.

After that brain burner a serious lack of thought needed to happen in the next game.  Rampage was a perfect fit.  So simplistic, the dexterity, fun, silly game was great.  I still maintain that I couldn’t play this game twice in a row, the set-up is quite long and just doesn’t provide enough strategy, it’s pretty random after the obvious choice is selected.  But has been fun every time I’ve played it, and I’d do it again some other day.

We moved up stairs for some dinner and then some Power Grid!  We selected to play the Japan map, which was a first for everyone.  Chuck wanted to again test out his rush the end strategy and for the most part was able to do so.  The end came down to myself Chuck and Johnny.  I triggered end game, but upon reflection probably should not have since all three of us could power 16 cities.  It allowed Johnny to only build into 16 cities, skip the 17th and ensure he at least won on tiebreakers.  He did a great job of managing power plants and using them to the most efficient way possible.  Some notes about the Japan map in general, we got stuck at the end of step 2.  There were literally no cities to build into, regardless of who you were.  I’ve never had that happen before, but it only lasted a single round until the step 3 card was revealed during the auction phase.  I didn’t particularly love the cities that only had 2 spaces to build into, I thought that all three should be available; and understood the cities with duplicate $10 spaces, but that it might have worked better if we played that you could only own one of the spaces, not two, like Chuck did.  Overall very good and the one we all deemed would be closest to the original game, but I don’t think it came close to ‘replacing’ either USA or Germany, and the Korean map still reigns supreme for me.

Onto Legendary: Marvel, we played the villain side, and tried to put down Professor X.  He obviously lead the X-Men Adversary group along with MLF and the Uncanny Avengers.  Johnny easily had the best combo using both Bullseye and Rocket Raccoon to have high buy and attack powers.  He had a relatively small deck and wiped clean the board many a time.  The end result had myself and Johnny out ahead, but we play Legendary as a cooperative game, and had 0 interest in competing with one another after the Commander is downed.  I think Legendary is still a game I enjoy just a bit more when played solo, but I would ever complain about having the opportunity to play with friends.

To finish out the long day of gaming, we played Tzolk’in.  Chuck absolutely tore us all new assholes.  He used and abused the technology track to hit up every other aspect of the game that wasn’t on the Chikenitza wheel.  He had something like 95 points, and I came in second with a (comparatively) measly 60-something.  Johnny really struggled to find his game, he ended with a ton of workers (6?) and ways to easily feed them, but not much else.  He made a late push for God-track points and successfully knocked me off of the yellow lead, which was rather immaterial since no one was catching Chuck and I finished in second anyway.  Chris had an unremarkable game from what I remember, he was in third but far enough behind me that I was safely secured there.  Something I’ve noticed about Chris’ games lately is that he makes some late pushes.  I think it’s a factor of getting some base knowledge and his feet wet in a game.  I think he’s done much better in games which we have played before.  And since a lot of the time we tend to keep playing new games, as we acquire quicker than we play, it can take a while to gain that knowledge.  I believe he is the least experienced of the core group but he’s catching up quickly, having now been exposed to a very wide variety to game types, from co-op deck building to heavy Euro/resource management.  Very happy to have him as a friend and game group partner.  We’re heading back to his place again on Sunday the 5th, should be good times.

7/3/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played:  Dead of Winter, Belfort, Pandemic: On The Brink, Red7

A day of from work on a Friday, sounds like a great day of gaming!  Unfortunately Steve had a to work, because government stuffs.  He got off at 4 and we met Chuck at GMG around 5 o’clock.  So it was effectively a Tuesday Game Night on a Friday was later hours.  We played until about midnight, so it was a solid session.  Jeff and Dan are gamers who apparently often there on Fridays, and knew Chuck from other events, so we joined up with them.

Jeff had Dead of Winter on the table, and I jumped at the chance to play this game that EVERYONE raves about.  I still haven’t heard a bad thing about this game, and I’m not going to say a bad thing neither.  This was fantastic!  So much fun, relatively simple and works so well and smoothly.  There is a traitor mechanism, but it isn’t always present.  Each player also has a personal goal that must be accomplished to ensure a personal victory.  This makes everyone more suspicious of each other and disguises the traitor just a bit.  For example in this game, I needed more than 12 characters in play along with a team win of the overall goal.  As the traitor, Steve just had to make us lose in a variety of ways.  As for how the game works, everyone has characters to expend action dice with.  You get 1 more die than characters you control and can use dice however you want.  You can draw cards, fight zombies, and add to shared goals (or detract if you’re the traitor).  When you move or fight you must roll a 12 sided damage die to determine bad shit that may or may not happen.  Bad stuff will happen, but character abilities generally help you out, as in any game.  Where this game really shines is the Crossroads mechanism.  Every turn the person to your right draws a crossroads card and actions you take or don’t take, characters in play, or just because things will sometimes occur.  These things will usually have multiple resolve options and can be good or bad; it’s up the person’s whose turn it is to choose what will happen.  It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure in board game form.  It changes so much of each game and seriously adds flavor, story and theme to the game.  In this particular scenario and game we were able to defeat Steve rather easily, but I’d imagine it’s pretty hard to be the traitor on your first play through.  Can’t wait to play this again, it was just so good, i’ll have to buy it at some point.

Next up was Belfort, Steve saw it in my bag and wanted the chance to finish a game after our last one was cut short.  Everything went smoothly, and we wound up with good mix of guilds.  3 of them provided resources, one added trading actions and the Wizard’s Guild which allows players to switch buildings between areas to manipulate area control.  the 5 player game felt very close the entire way through, even at each of the three scoring rounds.  The end scoring was Chuck, me behind by 1 and Steve another point behind me.  Jeff and Dan were only about 3-5 points behind, it was really close.  Steve had a heavy trade strategy using good old Uncle Ord’s Trading post and the trader’s guild.  He robbed Peter to pay Paul, who paid back Steve so that Steve could then repay Peter.  At least that’s how it felt, he was doing some serious mathing.  Chuck and I played similar games acquiring more workers and gaining extra points in the ‘have more works category’, but he used the opposite buildings than I did and focused his building just a little bit more.  I tried for 3 areas, he focused hard on 2.  Jeff focused really hard on 1 and used the Wizard’s Guild to ensure he was second in command in a second area.  Dan had a slight rules misunderstanding and wasn’t able to build one of the buildings he wanted.  I’m not sure how much this would have effected end game scoring, but the bonus action potentially could have stacked and then you never know.  Belfort is a game where any point gains you have are point losses for others, so ya never know.

Pandemic: On the Brink is an expansion for Pandemic that comes with 3 modules.  We played the module that added a step to epidemics and enhances one virus strain to make it more deadly and therefore harder to eradicate.  I played the Dispatcher and was able to use Chuck’s ability of removing cubes when moving through a city.  It was a great combo.  Anthony had shown up and replaced Dan in this game, he played a role where cities connected to where he was located couldn’t gain any cubes.  He just had this knack for being in the right place at the right time.  I think he prevented roughly 10 separate occurrences of cube placement.  It saved us.  Jeff’s ability allowed card trading with him and Steve could look at cards coming up in the outbreak deck.  If he had sat next to Anthony, he might have enhanced Anthony’s ability which hardly seems possible after watching what happened.  I’m not entirely sure how we pulled off a victory at 5 epidemic cards, it looked so grim for so long, I was convinced we were toast.  But we were able to get the win and all felt really good about it, Pandemic; still fantastic every time played.

Night was finished up with some Red7.  The game is now my go-to filler for every occasion.  It’s just so incredibly deep for how simple it it.  I’m still trying to get the hang of the best end game strategy for my hand each game, as what I see as end game is so often upgraded prematurely by the actions of the other players (which obviously makes it not the most effective end game strategy).

6/30/2015 – Gamemaster Games

Games Played:  Glory to Rome, Nyctophobia, Power Grid

Kenny wanted to play Glory To Rome.  The artwork was very cartoonish and for the first little bit, it didn’t make a tremendous amount of sense to me.  Basically the first player plays a card and the other players either play the same color card or draw more cards to flush out your hand.  Each color card has a building it represents (special ability when built), a resource (used to build said buildings), and an action.  You will basically use each card for one of those things.   Cards used for action end up in a shared pool that can be drawn from in the future.  Victory points are the way to victory, but there are two buildings that can end the game immediately and give you the win.  Most buildings solely provide victory points, and your victory points (or influence as it’s called) is also a cap on cards you can play in other areas.  I shared the victory with Kenny, but I was ahead for long enough that I feel like I should have won.  I did enjoy the game (after I got the hang of it) and it’s kind of a shame that that game is out of print.  I would like to play some more and see how it flushes out when you get to deep strategies.  However, with the ‘luck of the draw’ I get the feeling that often times you fall into a strategy based on buildings in your hand.  Overall, thumbs up from me, positive experience.

Catherine and Anthony stopped by and were trying to get some more play testing in for Nyctophobia.  Catherine made a few changes to the rules, including the diminishing returns on movement if you use it for both actions.  I still think the game needs a bit more incentive to use the other actions, specifically the flashlight.  I’m not really sure when the use it, as moving is usually a better action for me.  Catherine got the hunter to move out of it’s line of sight once, so I suppose that make the action just incredibly situational.  She still has a long way to go in my opinion, but I think the game has some great potential to be different and solid.  Different and unique will always catch the attention of the ‘media’, I’d like to see her succeed.  On top of that, she has a great reason and cause for the game.

Power Grid.  Everyone has been clamoring to play a bit of this since I brought it up at the library many months ago.  We finally got it to the table, with Steve, myself, Chuck, Johnny and Dave (?).  We played on the USA map, the southwest was blocked out, for reference.  My plan was to try a new strategy, maybe nuclear plants, but Chuck squashed that pretty quickly by rushing through most of the game, and not really giving anyone else a chance to ‘set-up’.  There was not much competition for power plants, so it’s my belief that money was therefore in large supply, no real resource competition and therefore kinda easy for Chuck to rush it.  After all was said and done, Chuck was able to complete his rush and whooped us all.  I think that a different order of power plants and a more experienced group of players would slow the game down a little and prevent the rush, Chuck isn’t so convinced, haha.