April 02, 2008

Participants: Jon, David K, Gili, Yitzchak, Jonathan, Eran

Jonathan is a first-timer from Jerusalem, first time to the club and first time gamer. Eran is a very experienced gamer I met in Dallas at the first BGG.con. He lived in Dallas for several years and is now back in Israel, but he lives in Carmiel so is unlikely to come often. He was in the Tel Aviv area, however, so he make the trip.

R-Eco

Jon 7, David, Jonathan, Eran

I don't remember the other player's results, but the highest was 3. This continues to be a nice little filler.

Jon 8, David 7, Yitzchak

So much so that we played it again later in the evening. Yitzchak managed to avoid dumping in the first half of the game, but then dumped tons and tons in the latter half, ending up negative something.

Robo Rally

Jonathan+, Eran, Jon

I thought this could make a nice second game for Jonathan after R-Eco, and I don't often get to play it. It's better with more players, but it was still fun with three.

We played with just two boards and two flags to touch. Each of us also had an option which didn't get lost when you died.

I had a stunning first two rounds and ended up on the first flag. Unfortunately, on my next round I received 8 points of damage. I crawled out of the laser turrets and shut down the next turn. Meanwhile, Eran was doing about average and managed to reach the first flag. then he sat on it while Jonathan tried to touch it. He couldn't, since the flag was sitting in a corner near two walls, making it impossible for Eran to be pushed off of it.

Somehow, Eran eventually moved and Jonathan fell into a pit and had to start over. It didn't look two difficult to get to the second flag, as there was a row of conveyors leading very close to it, so I told Jonathan to be happy if he even got to the first flag by the time the game was over.

Eran and I ended up conflicting, however. While we were running around in circles hoping for just the right thing, Jonathan got to the first flag and worked his way to the second. Eran managed to kill himself in the meantime, and in the end it was Jonathan and me in contention for the second flag. And Jonathan won. An amazing comeback.

Notre Dame

David+, Yitzchak, Gili

I don't know the exact scores, but David was at least ten points ahead of Nadine, who was well ahead of Gili. Gili, through too much concentration on Notre Dame, found herself at one point with no cubes on the board and no cubes in her provinces, so literally had nothing to do unless she acquired the trusted friend card. She didn't even have the cash to use on the personalities in order to get herself another cube.

Settlers of Catan

Eran+, Jonathan, Gili

In this game, Gili would have been doing fine but the robber blocked her 6 wood production for several turns, allowing Eran to move ahead. Jonathan started off slow, but made some gains by the time the game ended.

Race for the Galaxy

David 51, Yitzchak 47, Jon 46

Yitzchak's first game. He's a San Juan nut, so it is no surprise that this went over well with him.

I went pretty straight military. I don't think this is a great strategy, since it doesn't give you an engine for acquiring cards (excepting the occasional windfall world, making it hard to get the six point developments. Sure, I got a 7 point military world out and a few 5 pointers, but that doesn't compare to the three 10 point devels that the other players got out (I got out two).

Yitzchak did fairly well with both shipping and six point devels. In fact, the last one he dropped gave him 3 bonus points each for three specific cards in play, and he had every one of them; a total of 13 points for that devel.

David had not only shipping points, but a card drawing engine whenever he produced, eventually drawing six cards every time he produced. That made him happy regardless of what phase occurred.

Mr Jack

Jonathan (Detective), Eran (Criminal)

I don't know what happened with this game.