November 28, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David, Yitzchak, Gili, Ben, Binyamin

First game night back in my house, and we got to start playing the new games I brought back from my trip. Binyamin only arrived later in the evening.

Nadine and I took out Mr. Jack, but didn't get a chance to play it.

Robo Rally

David+, Nadine, Ben, Yitzchak, Jon, Gili

I've been wanting to get this game for the group for ages, and now I have. It was just as fun for me as the first time I played it back in BGG.con 1. Back then, we played with six players, four boards with 4 goals. It was too long, and there was already a runaway winner 2/3 of the way through the game at 3 hours.

I thought that 3 goals on two boards would be good - not too few to make it easy, not too many to drag on. It was definitely better, but still a bit too long, however, part of that was simply because we were all learning the game, and I was relearning the game, so we spent a lot of time going over the too long rulebook and trying to get the rules right. Even so, a lot of turns had people complaining that they didn't realize how something worked. And we played without the options, too!

Next time, I think we play on one board with two goals and see how it goes. With options.

Gili became the most frustrated during the game, when Ben ended up pushing her into a pit twice in a row. She essentially gave up and went to play a two-player game with me instead.

I was also in a lot of difficulty and stayed in last place pretty much throughout the game, although it looked like I was doing well when I started. Meanwhile, Nadine also ended up getting killed twice, but in the end it helped her. She healed back up to 7 and re-entered the board with the right cards. Yizchak came in a comfortable middle.

David won, Nadine came in second, then Ben. Ben had been way ahead, competing with David to win, but didn't have good cards. Then he had even worse cards because he barely got any, due to damage points.

I think the game was a hit with David, and Ben, Nadine, and Yitzchak also liked it. I simply had to reassure them that it was a chaotic crazy game like Cosmic, where you take it as it comes, and not a strategy game like Power Grid.

Schotten Totten

Jon/Binyamin+, Gili

I took this out and discovered that it didn't have English rules. I quickly went to download some, but not wanting to keep Gili waiting, we played the game without any of the special cards. Binyamin came in the middle and I returned to Robo Rally while he took over.

He says that the game is dull without the special cards, but actually I though it was ok even without them. I'm looking forward to playing with them. In any case, the game is light-years better than dull old Lost Cities.

Bridge

Ben, Nadine, Yitzchak, Binyamin

I can't get them to stop playing this for the last hour of every evening.

Magic

Jon++, David+

We played with some of the new cards I just picked up. As we drafted, I tossed out duplicates to make sure we had lots of new cards to play with.

I ended up with a reasonably good White/Red deck with a splash of Green, while David had Green/Black. I only lost the second game because of mana screw. My cards had some synergy, and he had very little to stop my flying.