June 10, 2009

Participants: Jon, Elijah, Nadine, Ben, Max, Abraham, Gili, David K

A few early birds showed up and started playing in the living room. The flow of games that were played confused me; I'm hazy on anything played in which I didn't.

Mr Jack

Nadine, Elijah

Nadine re-taught this to Elijah, but she wasn't interested in finishing it as other people came in.

Dominion

Max 32, Jon 30, Abraham 27, Ben

First play for Ben, who didn't manage to find synergy (or, in his words, had very bad luck).

Thief was in the game, as was Festival, Feast, and Library, all of which should lead to the Festival-Feast-Library and no treasure strategy. Abraham headed that way, but he got there by means of Remodels. Somehow he got the synergy going too late, though it was doing nicely at the end.

I did something of the same thing, but I also added some silvers and golds. I lost a silver to an early thief, but as the game went on, thieves are used less which made the treasures safer bets.

Max used thief and Gardens to rack in coppers. He only made it to 30some cards, but it was still enough to squeak out a victory. For one thing, his point accumulation started earlier than ours did.

Ben tried a thief without success. He managed to get an early Province, but then his two silvers were stolen by Max and he never recovered.

Boggle

Gili, Nadine, Elijah

Meanwhile, these guys played this quick filler while waiting for David to show up.

Tichu

David, Gili, Elijah, Nadine

When David showed up, we only had ten minutes left to Dominion, so they played a hand of this.

Agricola

Jon 50, David 42, Nadine 35, Max 35

First play for Max. Max requested to play this, as he had bought a copy and hadn't been able to get it to the table where he plays, fearing that it would be too complex. After playing, he realize that he was right; he liked the game, but it's too complex for his group.

David complained early on about how poorly he was doing, as usual, even though Nadine and I saw through him. He was also convinced that my few early occupations (gain a vegetable when I take one of the food spaces; add two items when I sow) put me majorly in the lead. I admit that they were decent.

However, I gained nearly twenty points in the last two rounds. If two of these had gone awry, or one of them and David achieved some other sudden coup, the end would have been different.

In my last rounds, I added my fifth clay room (+1 for the room, +2 for a minor improvement that gave me +2 for a five room house), converted to stone (+5), played an occupation that gave me an additional +1 per stone room (+5), solidified having the most/tied for most number of occupations (+3 due to an earlier played occupation), and gained a wheat (+2).

David thought he stole back the most occupations on the final round, but he hadn't noticed that I played one on the penultimate round as well, so he only tied him. This gave him +3 as well, but didn't prevent me from getting my points.

I had my vegetables and a stove, but I usually had to take at least one action before each harvest to ensure I had enough food. David had fantastic wheat and baking running at mid-game, and so didn't need to worry about food the second half of the game. he also had a pasture with a bunch of each type of animal (minor improvement let him mix animals). Unfortunately, he was exactly one animal short of 3 points in each one.

Nadine expressed dissatisfaction with the artificial limitations of points for animals and produce and so on, as well as how 1 sheep is the same as 3 sheep, but different than 4 sheep. This leads to all sorts of annoying calculation that shouldn't be necessary.

Nadine spent a very long time calculating on round 12 and 13, and in the end it didn't matter that much. Max had good pastures, produce, and animals, but his house and bonus points were small.

Cosmic Encounter

Elijah+, Gili, Ben

Elijah always like to play this, and I thought it might make Ben happy to play something he's familiar with. He still lost, though.

This was Gili's second play, but had been so long since her first play that she had to relearn the game. She hadn't been too impressed with her last play; this one she enjoyed somewhat more.

Ben played Void and something, Elijah Machine and something, Gili Visionary and something.

Traders of Carthage

Gili, Ben, Elijah

First play for Ben, and probably second or third for Elijah. Ben enjoyed this game which is weight-wise on par with R-Eco.