March 17, 2010

Participants: Binyamin, Nadine, Gili, Abraham, Emily, Eitan, Jon, Tal, Toby

I never received a session report for last week, although a session took place. All I know about it is that they played Sienna and the night didn't end until 1:30 am.

This week, the first week I'm back from the US, I had to be out until around 8:45, but I left the apt available. When I returned, gaming was going on.

Hunting Party

Abraham, Nadine, Binyamin, Gili

I don't know what happened, but I think it was the first game for everyone except for Abraham, who brought the game. It might have been his second play. It sounded like a fantasy version of Clue. They appeared to enjoy the game.

Saikoro

Eitan, Emily

They came later, and played one and a half games of this until I arrived. I don't know who won.

Steam

Jon 74, Emily 49, Eitan 46

We had all played this once as a five player game, although I had played Age of Steam a few additional times, as well. They both liked it, and, since Nadine didn't really like, I figured it wouldn't tempt her to break up the game she was playing.

We played on the German side of the board, and without the "first game" benefits. I don't know if it was because we were only three players, or just because Steam is an easier game than AoS, but none of us ran into any money issues during the game. The first round, two people paid a buck or two at the end of the round, and that was that. The rest was jockeying for routes and cubes.

Ten rounds seemed to be too long for this. There are somewhat less options available later in the game, and in any case it was fairly determined that I was going to win by round 5 or 6, barring some catastrophic bad plays.

It's still a nice game, especially for me because I love route planning and pickup and delivery mechanics. There's no "luck", but games play out very differently. One of the negative parts of the game still remains prominent: namely, that you can choose to give points to one of the other players, which can have a dramatic king-making effect.

In our game, we all played near the middle, but I was in the actual middle while my opponents played slightly to the south. Emily eventually took some northeast routes as well, while Eitan managed to get a route or two up to the northwest. I occupied the middle and north, from west to east.

March 03, 2010

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Emily

This is the second of three game nights that I'm away in the US. Nadine hosted; take it away, Nadine:

An efficient, calm and fun session - two meaty games in less that two and a
half hours.

Year of the Dragon

Emily+, Nadine, Gili

Turn order was Emily, Nadine, Gili most of the game. Final results were
Emily, Nadine, Gili. Emily did a good job, she won by 7 points and was the
only one to have one firecracker during the whole game.

Princes of Florence

Nadine 125, Emily 109, Gili 101

Gili said she didn't understand how I did it, I said I didn't either. I had
the most works played, 6 vs. 5, I didn't get any Bonus cards and had all 3
freedoms, 2 jesters, Emily had 3 and one freedom. We all got best work at
least twice. I had two Prestige cards vs. 1, and Gili's gave her no points,
so that's partly luck, and I started with two cards with the same building
and bought the third. We didn't bid much against each other, everything
except jesters mostly went for 200.

Ed Note: Apparently they messed up the scoring, using $1 = 1 point, instead of $1 = 1/2 point.