October 10, 2007

Participants: Jon, Ben, Nadine, David K, Adam, Binyamin

Group attendance still light, but I don't mind. We still argue about what to play.

Power Grid

Ben 17+, David 17-, Adam 14

They played in the middle of the Germany board. Third phase seemed to come early, but there was a dearth of high-producing power plants. Some fierce bidding over the last plants, up to 130.

Ben won by cash. David expended his cash in order to beat out Adam to a plant, but it turned out that her didn't need to, since Adam wasn't going to be able to build enough cities. As a result, David lost to Ben in the cash situation.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

Binyamin 58/1, Jon 57/5, Nadine 73/6

This was a basic set collection game taught to us by Binyamin. It uses a lot of fancy components to built a palace for Cleopatra, including the entire box cover. So if your box cover rips, you're out a component. Although really the box cover is not necessary.

There are three piles of cards. Each turn you either take a pile of cards and add one card to each pile (the one you took from is now a single card). Or you meld your sets and earn points. As the palace gets built, less set types are available to meld.

Many of the better cards give you corruption points, as does going over ten cards at any point. Once or twice a game there will be a blind bid of victory points, with the highest player losing 3 corruption points, and the others gaining some more. Everyone loses their bid.

In the end, the player with the most corruption can't win the game. Of the remaining players, the one with the highest victory points wins. Tie goes to least corruption.

That's about it. The corruption point element and had size limit adds some nice decision making to the game. There are a bunch of other flavor mechanics adding details, some of which seem rather dispensable.

In our game, I was convinced I was losing the corruption count until midway, when I thought that Binyamin finally passed me. He managed to win both blind bids, however, and so reduced his corruption to almost nothing. In the end, he beat me by a single victory point. Nadine had more victory points, but she lost by a single corruption point to mine.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David+

I won a rare game sequence against David. We drafted from random cards. There are still so many of my later common cards that I just don't know that it's like opening fresh packs of a new expansion.

I somehow ended up playing blue/white, since I had enough fliers and creatures in them together with artifact creatures. I splashed black for a swampwalker and sunburst payments.

David played his usual Black and a second color red, because he managed to steal all the direct damage cards during the draft. Nevertheless, my deck was able to get out and get around defenses better than his could.

Bridge

Ben, Nadine, Binyamin, Jon/David

While playing Magic, David or I would fill in for the fourth hand in bridge. I didn't pay much attention to what was happening, however, and whenever it came to playing, the dummy would take over the hand.