Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club

2012

2012-01-02T18:35:00.000+02:00

From January 2012, the JSGC session reports and comments will be at http://jerusalemstrategygames.wordpress.com/.

December 28, 2011

2011-12-28T23:43:00.004+02:00

Mace, Gili, Eitan, Emily, Nadine

Eszter, Bill and Shirley couldn't make it. Mace's last time, he leaves again on Monday.

Gili's waiting to play London, but it's 4 player, so we postponed it.

Nile

Eitan won, then Mace, Emily, Gili and me. I had two cards, I kept losing to the locusts. I don't even think I could have done much differently, so it's a lot of luck. Eitan didn't even understand the scoring and he won, he thought it was most cards. Which does help.

Agricola

Mace 41, Nadine 36, Emily 33, Gili 29, Eitan 24

Emily and Eitan had never played. First play with my new used game from the math trade. I'm not used to setting up, we were confused at first until we realized we were on the wrong side of the main board, I didn't even know there were two sides. Emily like it, Eitan didn't like how slow it was with 5 players. Mace and I spent a lot of time trying to order real food. Two restaurants didn't answer, another had a different number, it took a while. I have the expansion which we didn't use, the game is complicated enough without it. I spent some time trying to figure out whether to plow two vegetables or a grain and vegetable, but that didn't hold up the next player. I had five family members, Mace also. He had very synergestic cards with lots of grain and plowing. I could get a vegetable on Day Laborer, and get 5 food per vegetable. Emily did very well for her first play, she had no empty spaces. Eitan got 8 bonus points from cards, but didn't fill in most of his board. Gili got a field anytime someone plowed. Eitan said we needed Yehuda to add up the points, it took 3 people.

Chanukah Games Day

2011-12-25T23:23:00.007+02:00

Gili, Maor, Bezalel, Binyamin, Lotem, Nadine, Mace, Emily, Eitan, Eszter, Kate, Moshe

Gili had the good idea to have a games day on Chanukah, on the day that Eitan and Emily were off from university. Eszter and Gili's kids and a friend came. I met Moshe in BGG RSP, I like his philosophical posts on religion, and joined his RSP group on Facebook. He lives in Jerusalem but works nights so he's never met anyone in our group. Kate is his wife, she's very good at Eurogames, Moshe is also good but more of a wargamer, they brought their very cute and well-behaved year old daughter. Kate is from Ireland, Eszter from Hungary, Mace is from NY but lives in Australia.

Highland Clans

Gili 39, Mace 34, Emily 34, Eitan 33

My other free bgg.con game. We started learning this, then when more people arrived I stopped. Close game. Consensus was that it was a bit too random.

El Grande

Kate 33, 76,130; Nadine 41,72,118; Eszter 25,60,110; Moshe 27,54,75

Moshe had heard of this but never played, so I taught it. Same with our next two games. Eszter had played once. I started strong with special scoring, but that leads to fewer boots on the ground for the rest of the game. I was attacked a bit, and Kate caught on and played very well.

Egizia

Emily 90, Mace 82, Gili 76, Eitan 73

One of Eitan and Emily's new games, they had played once. It looked interesting, Egypt under the Romans, but also similar to other games. Emily said the starvation strategy is highly penalized but she made it work.

Princes of Florence

Nadine 62, Kate 60, Eszter 56, Moshe 49

First play for Moshe and Kate, second for Eszter. I taught it and pointed out strategy issues, but it's hard to grasp the first time. I won due to two Prestige cards, Kate played six profession cards for more points than I played my six. Bidding was very low, jesters went for 500 max. Kate and Moshe had a bidding war at the end for a second builder for him, third for her, he got it for 1000. Turns out he misunderstood the situation and didn't need it, she did.

Louis XIV

Mace 59,Gili 51, Maor 48

Gili's variant where the high value mission cards score more, Mace had the most of those.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 114, Kate 98, Moshe 84

Another hard game to learn the first time. It's not as competitive with three. I built a lot and thought I'd lose people, but ended up managing to get a lot of rice. Everyone played low numbers on the turn track, so I was first more than I expected to be. Famine and Disease were both towards the end of the game, with War, two Fireworks and Taxes in the first half.

The kids played Clue and Munchkin.

First night of Chanukah

2011-12-20T23:53:00.006+02:00

Bill, Shirley, Liza, Mace, Shlomia, Shachar, Nadine

Mace flew in from Australia; Liza is a friend of Bill and Shirley's, who also flew in for a few weeks.

Dreidle
Bill won, beating Shirley by 3 points. Shirley started, Bill was second, which is an advantage when the pot is only refilled by ante. We played with m&m's, two or three rounds. First time playing Dreidle for Bill and Shirley.

Train of Thought
By the end, we managed to get faster at it. Mace did particularly well and was the first to be willing to be timed, he got 2.5 in the two minutes. But it's not easy, and again everyone said it didn't really feel like a party game.

Lo Ra
Mace 13,13,29; Liza 12,19,29; Shachar 1,6,20; Shirley 7,7,20; Bill 0,-7,9.
I asked Bill to get this out of the drawer. He couldn't find it until Mace pointed it out, I forgot that the title is in Hebrew. When Liza arrived I let her take over for me, Shachar and Shlomia teamed up. Two ties and Bill, at least he didn't end up negatives. He had a lot of Tribes but not much else. Disasters didn't show up til second and third yovels, but then a lot did of course. Some suspense at the end of yovels waiting for the last mosaic. First play for everyone, they got it by the second round but were slightly hurt by not understanding everything at the beginning. It worked well with five, everyone liked the game.

Shadows Over Camelot
Rather than caring about winning, everyone's goal was to be the traitor. Mace played very cagily at the beginning, in case he became the traitor. We passed out the cards at 5 swords. Liza had left, so it was 6 cards out of 8. After that everyone was cooperating well, and Mace committed himself to winning as a team, and as we suspected, there was no traitor. We won with 7 white swords. Shlomia did well, winning Excaliber and the solo knight quest, Shachar got the grail.

Upcoming: Mini Chanukah game day on Sunday at Gili's, and regular games next week on Wednesday.

December 14, 2011

2011-12-14T23:27:00.003+02:00

Gili, Emily, Eitan, Eszter, Nadine

Glen More

Emily 50, Eitan 41, Nadine 31, Eszter 22, Gili 16

Emily and Eitan got this game last week and played it once, which helped them. Gili was hit by a card misinterpretation which lost her a lot of points. This is a complex and interesting strategy game with a lot to consider, and explore. I took the fewest turns which didn't help me enough. It takes a while to understand the mechanics, scoring, cards and options. Emily got a Distillery right away and used it well.

Train of Thought

Gili brought over my new games, yay! We didn't want to learn the rules to a new game from scratch, but figured it would work with a party game. We played more seriously than it seems to expect. You get words and give three word clues to get the others to guess, with required start words. There is a two-minute sand timer. It took each of us at least two minutes just to think up our first set of clues. We did make it harder by requiring the required word to be used first instead of anywhere in the phrase. And we didn't use the timer. Because Eszter wasn't sure of the meaning of a word, Gili introduced us to a distracting cool phone app, Camdictionary, that reads and translates words in images. Emily got the most cards for guessing. Gili did the best at having her word used in the next clue phrase, which gives no points but was impressive. The game is fun but challenging, but we didn't really see how it's a party game.

Previous Plays

Gili hosted while I was away. Apparently, Jake and Daphne, who met at our Sukkot games day, showed up together once, and Jake came another time on his own.

Settlers of Catan - Jake+, Daphne, Emily, Gili, Ezster

El Grande - Eszter and Eitan tied for first with Emily a close second, Gili third.

Key Harvest - Gili, Jake, Emily and Eitan started as a team, then Emily took over when Jake left while the game was in progress, the team won.

NJ, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas

2011-11-22T08:45:00.011+02:00

I’m describing my experience of the trip to bgg.con, and trying not to repeat too much that Jon included in his blog, Yehuda. The Board Game Geek conference is organized by the bgg community.

Teaneck

I arrived in Teaneck Thursday evening. Candle lighting on Friday was at 4, so we mainly cooked. Friday night my cousin and husband went to a birthday party after dinner. I played Puerto Rico, which I gave them, with their kids. They barely remembered having played in Jerusalem a few years ago, so I taught the game and helped them a bit with strategy, because after I left they’d be playing on their own. They did pretty well, Debra took an early hospice, and Michael was doing well and had a lot of points. I ended up winning by 3 points.

Kansas City

Sunday I met Jon at Newark for the flight to Kansas City. A very small plane and a small airport where we were met by Bill and Shirley. Their house is big; we each got a bedroom with bath. They also have a mostly well-behaved, beautiful large puppy dog, Musi, that doesn’t really bark. But does sniff people a lot. Their Christmas tree, which is set up all year, has themed decorations including Americana, comics and Bible stories.

Secret Santa

Jon and I usually participate in the bgg Secret Santa, where you are assigned someone to give a game to, and receive a game from someone. Jon had said he wasn’t going to this year because he was getting enough games, but ended up signing up. He got someone in Singapore. After having gotten someone in Australia one year, I did U.S. only. The assignments came out the Friday before the con, so one of the things we did on Sunday was select and order games. I was going to send Carson City which I like but ended up sending Navigador, which is a better game. My target is in Sebastopol, relatively close to Menlo Park.

I added a note to my Secret Santa that they could ship the game to me at the hotel instead of sending to Israel. Jon added a note to his that they could contact me for suggestions. His Secret Santa did contact me, but when I asked Jon he had no info beyond his wishlist. But I wrote back that they could ship to the hotel, and to let me know which games. Jon wanted to be surprised, but didn’t want to purchase something he was receiving, so we were supposed to stop him from buying those games. His Secret Santa wrote me back that he was shipping to the hotel, but didn’t say which games.

Monday

Bill and Shirley were being supportively kosher and had bought enough utensils to cook for us. Monday we hung around a bit setting up new phones and planning food. Then we shopped, did some sightseeing, and got the rental car for the trip. I went along to be listed as a third driver, but at $9 a day for a few hours of driving wasn’t worth it. Shirley could drive, but Bill ended up driving the whole trip down. I went with Bill to drop off something at a friend’s place and to pick up some stuff from his office; I ended up cleaning up which I enjoy doing in offices that need it, and also got a demo of his company’s product.

Tuesday

We ended up leaving at 9 instead of 8 on Tuesday morning. They had to drop the dog off at doggie day care, and we had a lot of food which took a while to fit into the car. Jon wanted to arrive at the con by 6 to help pack welcome bags, where the social card-matching game called Spare Squares which he designed for all attendees to play was being distributed. So he didn’t let us stop for lunch, we had sandwiches in the car.

We did manage to stop for breaks several times, including to take pictures after crossing into Oklahoma and Texas. We listened to a few NPR podcasts and took pictures. I expected the land to be flat and boring, but it’s scenic with a lot of trees with colorful autumn leaves.

Dallas

We hit a lot of traffic in Dallas, and had problems connecting to get GPS directions; once we got them I wrote them down just in case. It was also very warm, 79 degrees, so Shirley and I were discussing how we only had winter clothes along. We checked in to our hotel, then walked over to the con at the Westin. Of course all the welcome bags were ready and they didn’t need help with setting up. There were already a lot of people playing.

The Con

2011-11-22T08:40:00.009+02:00

Roll Through the Ages

We ate the food we had brought, and then played some games in the lobby area. Jon, Bill and I played Roll Through the Ages with someone we met. It’s a cute short and simple game, I tied for second. We walked around gawking at everything, Jon showed me how Crokinole works – it’s tough on the hands like Pitch Car. All the dexterity games looked interesting.

Troyes

Then Jon and I learned and played Troyes with two other people. I had read about the game but not how it worked, Jon had more of an idea and caught on quicker. In addition to all the actions, each player gets one secret card which gives bonus points at the end of the game. I didn’t understand how everything worked, but focused on my card which gave points for placement on cards. Placement on cards also gives additional victory points for each placement. The other players helped me calculate optimal cards, but within the area I selected, such as which was the best red action. I didn’t understand all the rotating worker mechanics, Jon didn’t either, which affected our points. At the end, I had to choose between two possible bonus point actions without knowing which bonus cards were in the game, I picked wrong, but it ended up not mattering, I won with 37 points. Jon thinks I get extra help because I don’t understand games right away and ask questions, it’s hard to separate learning mechanics from strategy.

I walked around looking at all the different types of games like in the War Game room.

I thought the Game Library with 4,500 games would be crowded and have a long line, but they had a very efficient scan system of a barcode on the game, and on attendee badges, so there was barely any waiting time.

Wednesday

2011-11-22T08:11:00.012+02:00

Wednesday morning Jon left early and volunteered at registration, and saved spaces in line for Bill and Shirley but not for me, we were in different lines alphabetically. We didn’t get there until close to 10, which I thought was late. I talked to people I was in line with, very representative of the participants – computer programmers from Texas. I said that I was surprised that the line wasn’t moving, they told me it doesn’t open til 10. So we got there at the right time, it went pretty quickly, all very organized. You pick a free game or two upon registering, I took Highland Clans and Train of Thought, I'm not familiar with either of them.

I had read about a new game, introduced at the recent huge Essen game con in Germany, Walnut Grove, which I was thinking of buying it and wanted to try it out. All day Wednesday and Thursday, whenever I went by it in the Hot Games room, which has Essen games set up, either a game was already in progress or there was no one there. I not only needed players, but someone to teach it.

I walked around looking at games, and ended up joining one in the large main game room, K2. One of the people playing was Mischa, a friend of Jon’s who runs the bgg math trade. I had traded one game but wasn’t going to be able to attend the official trade time on Saturday, so I had emailed the person I needed to give my game to, and the person who was giving me a game. The backup plan was to leave the game with Mischa.

K2 has a simple structure with deeper strategy than it appears.You expend points for climbing and oxygen, selected from cards you pick. I didn’t understand certain things right away, so I was behind most of the game. The other woman player was doing really well, she got both of her climbers to the very top, and down again alive, without even pitching a tent which reduces oxygen required. We were playing on the easy side of the board, with only summer weather, but it was still challenging. At the end, two players weren’t able to prevent either one or both of their climbers from dying, which results in a complete loss of points, so I came in second.

First Sparks

I went back into the Hot Games room and sat down by Walnut Grove, but no players came, and I was hungry, so I found the others and we took a break for lunch. I tried again after lunch, but switched to a game nearby which was starting, First Sparks, by the creator of Power Grid. The game is similar to Power Grid which helped us figure out how to play, and someone came over to teach it. One person hadn’t played Power Grid so we gave him some tips. It has a cave man theme and is simpler than Power Grid. The card structure is similar, but you place cavemen competitively for end game points.

We found out near the end of the game, because someone overheard us, that one of the changes from Power Grid is that you don’t bid for cards, rather you have right of refusal in turn order, so you never pay more than the amount on the card. We hadn’t had much competitive bidding, so it wouldn’t have made a big difference in the game, the card movement and availability are the same. I tied to win and had 3 vs. 1 food left to win the tiebreaker. I want to get this game because it’s good with attractive graphics, and I don’t have Power Grid. The store at the con finally got it from the airport on Friday, but it will be available for less at other stores, hopefully in time for Bill and Shirley to bring it.

Coney Island

Then I played Coney Island in the large room. I had this on my wishlist at one point, but couldn’t remember if I had taken it off or not. After playing, I was really hoping that I wouldn’t receive it as my Secret Santa gift. No one liked it, there are so many better games. We all helped each other as we tried to figure out the game. At one point, they recommended that I make a different move, where if I got a red tile instead of white tile in a random draw, I would get 9 points. It worked, which helped me, though I was still behind. I did start to understand the game by the end, by which time things were mostly already placed. I did what I could, and somehow ended up winning by one point.

Flash Point

Then I joined a firefighting game, Flash Point, an Essen game but in the main room. I didn’t realize it was cooperative, but it was interesting. We were playing with intro rules which meant no firetrucks and hoses, which must make it more interesting. I was fighting fires, everyone else was rescuing people. The game actions cause explosions and destruction. We ended up losing, the house collapsed before we could rescue everyone. But I was the only one who didn’t die because I happened to be outside the house. We had bad luck with the people, the first two tokens were blank rather than victims. It’s a good game because there’s a lot of fast action and some planning.

Jon came with me to try to get a game of Walnut Grove going. Scott Nicholson of Board Games with Scott walked by, he didn’t want to play but gave us a quick rules explanation. More players didn’t join, and Jon decided he was too tired to play a new game.

Niagara

We walked around a bit, Jon agreed to teach Tobago, and I saw a game of Niagara which I had heard of because one year I gave one of my Secret Santa targets a Niagara exapansion. Jon ended up playing Tobago, so I went back to join Niagara. It’s a good game, simple and cute mechanics, you physically move plastic discs in the river which push your canoes around and over the edge sometimes. It’s very difficult, an experienced player won. They played again but I left.

It was freezing cold on Wednesday, we didn’t have all our warm clothes with us because it had been so warm the day before. The rest of the week it warmed up with sun and some clouds, but we were mainly indoors.

Chitin: I

Bill and Shirley played the redesigned Chitin: I, which Bill had a copy of when he was in high school.

Thursday

2011-11-22T07:48:00.015+02:00

Nefarious

Jon and I started off playing Nefarious, by the designer of Dominion. It took me a while to understand it, but it didn’t matter that much because we had crazy condition cards. I came in second.

Tanto Cuore

Then we walked around and played a game similar to Dominion, Tanto Cuore. It’s Japanese with a theme of hiring maids, Jon had heard of it, and they had a demonstrator in a skimpy maid costume. Jon’s really good at Dominion, I’ve beaten him like once and usually don’t even come close. We thought we understood the game well, but didn’t understand the set-aside mechanic which is not in Dominion. I did very well, but Jon still beat me, 51 to 47, with 30 for the demonstrator, who may not play as hard as possible, or you can’t get good players to wear a maid costume.

I reached the person giving me Agricola by phone, and on the way to Madras Pavilion for lunch we picked it up from him by his hotel. Madras Pavilion was great even though it’s not a pavilion but in a strip mall. Really good kosher vegetarian Indian food, with Bill as a very helpful guide to Indian food.

Space Mission

After lunch Bill, Shirley and I went to pick a game from the game library. Bill wanted a space theme, so we picked Space Mission from the Essen games, and went into the main room. While we were trying to figure out how to play two other players joined us, one was Simon Strange. We managed to work it out, it’s a nice simple game. Tom won the tie with Simon at 39, Shirley and I had 30 and Bill 29. I commented on the nice look of the planets, Simon said better than ours. It turns out that he is a video game developer of Hellboy: Asylum Seeker and Godzilla: Save the Earth among others. He’s now working on a space-themed board game, with prototype artwork including planets, hence his comment. After Space Mission, Bill, Shirley and another player played his prototype with him. It looked too route-like so I decided not to play. Simon also play-tested Bill’s game and provided feedback.

Navegador

I played Navegador, which I had played once before. I had won that game, but we played something wrong so I shouldn’t have won. This game was the first time for everyone else, someone came by and gave a quick overview. I made a mistake on my first move and was behind the rest of the game. Two of the other players were doing really well, one was doing terribly. He improved, and we ended up tying for last place, he won the tiebreaker, so I lost.

At dinner, Jon said that I played Navegador which he likes, and he played Walnut Grove, which I wanted to play, and didn’t know til then that he had gotten to play. By then, his Secret Santa had written me that he got Navegador and Incan Empire for Jon.

Puerto Rico

Jon and I wanted to try the game library’s copy of the fancy new 10^th anniversary edition of Puerto Rico, but it was checked out so we took the regular one. The new version is approved for sale in Europe, but not in the U.S. because of the lead in the coins, they have to reprint them. Jon held it up for a few minutes and two players joined, one had played before. Jon’s much better than me at Puerto Rico, but I can beat him. I’m also not experienced or good at 4-player, we usually play 3-player, and online I play 3-player.

One of the other players crafted into Jon, who was able to trade sugar with two role coins, and he pretty much had the game from there with a coffee monopoly. I got blocked out of trading and couldn’t get anything going. I had a small warehouse, but no harbor, factory or wharf. One player, who only had tobacco and corn, took a harbor at one point. He had enough for a wharf, but I didn’t say anything, because he seemed to know what he was doing, having rejected advice before. But it turns out he had a wrong impression of how harbor works, so I should have mentioned it. I did tell him later that he should consider shipping, which he did, to my detriment. It’s always hard to know how much to help other players, they learn more by making mistakes, but it also makes the game more frustrating. Jon won by less than I expected, but still a lot, I came in second. 58, 45, 40, 37.

Gifts

We stopped by our hotel office to check for packages. Jon could see a package behind the counter. The desk clerk said it wasn’t for us and went to check the back, nothing there either. Jon asked again about the package he could see, which was a big box. The clerk showed it to us to prove that it wasn’t ours, but he was looking at the return address. It was my Secret Santa package, with an Agricola expansion and London, and Jungle Speed for my kids.

Jon had played Inca Empire on Thursday and liked it, which was handy since that was one of his Secret Santa games. We picked up his package Friday on the way to David’s for Shabbat.

Shabbat

2011-11-22T07:12:00.022+02:00

Friday

Friday morning Shirley and I packed up, loaded the car, checked out and drove over to the Westin. Jon had gone over early as usual, and Bill was going to Proto Alley that morning to demo his role playing game. He had also done a demo the night before for people he had gotten in touch with before the con. The game sounds interesting with an unusual structure – no DM and an internal economic system. He got a good reception with useful feedback.

I collected all our Spare Squares cards and matched them into sets, and labeled them and the envelopes to turn in. At lunch, Jon scored all the entries to date. The one I did for Shirley scored well, we thought it wouldn’t look right if she won, but Jon said not to worry, there would be higher scores, and there were.

Walnut Grove

Shirley and I sat down at the Walnut Grove table and I finally got to play. A guy from Brazil offered to teach the game, then decided to stay and play because it’s quick, and another guy, who had played before, also joined. I like the game because there’s very little down time, it’s not complicated, but has good decision-making. The guy who had played before beat me by one point, if I had one more cube I could have cancelled my -2 point loan and won.

Later, when I was thinking about the strategy in the game, I realized that I played wrong on the last turn, and actually lost by 2 points. I wanted to make one more enclosure, and I needed one more wood, but I couldn’t enclose my wood area. So I enclosed a different wood area to get the last wood, forgetting that I needed a worker there to produce. So I should have expanded my wood area and lost the extra point for the enclosure. I had 29 points, the winner 31. I got 18 points minus 2 for a loan from having 3 building multipliers. I didn’t realize how they interact so that was good for my score, but probably won’t happen again. We had an advantage during the game because the double production sections came up first round. I may like First Sparks better just because of the graphics, I’ll have to think about that. Well, it’s also a meatier game.

I gave Mischa my game for the math trade, and later ran into him with the person, who preferred to wait for the game rather than carry it around. Jon tracked down most of his games also. He’s taking back a lot of games including 4 or 5 of mine.

Shaarei Tefillah

Friday afternoon was a big rush, more than usual. We ran into a lot of traffic, we saw later that there had been an accident. We left at 3 to arrive at 4, we arrived around 4:15, Shabbat starts right after 5 in Dallas, not 4 like most places this time of year. Jon had the wrong address which delayed us slightly because we had unloaded the trunk and had to reload and re-unload, or rather Bill did. I was staying with someone else who wasn’t home yet, so I helped in the kitchen while the others were moving furniture and making beds. Then I wheeled my suitcase over, took it upstairs, made my bed, got ready, practically threw a gift at the hostess who had already lit, and rushed back for candlelighting and shul. We drove to shul which confused Bill and Shirley, they’re not used to the one-way drive system. No singing during Friday night services, nor dancing, I miss my shul.

I wanted to find out where my friend Joel Zeff was in Dallas, but his wife hadn’t known the name of his shul when I contacted her on Facebook. We were staying with David Elkin, I’d met him several times at Jon’s, he lives in Modiin but spends a semester each year teaching at SMU, and Jon always spends his bgg.con Shabbat with him. David was staying with Hanan Schlesinger, who lives in Alon Shvut but works in Dallas, not so unusual for Israelis. It turns out that Hanan and Joel work together; they had invited Joel for dinner but he was doing something else, he didn’t know that I’d be there. Joel gave two shiurim at shul they next day which I enjoyed. Hanan has met my kids in Alon Shvut through Joel though he didn’t remember them in particular. Eli is currently working with Joel’s son-in-law Micah Smith on set design for videos. At the tisch after dinner, playing Jewish geography, they discovered pretty quickly that the rabbi being honored had taught at the school Jon attended in West Hempstead.

London

Shabbat afternoon, Jon wasn’t feeling well and went to sleep. Bill, Shirley and I tried out London, with Hanan watching us struggle through the directions for a while. The rules weren’t very clear, even with examples, but we eventually started playing. Jon came down towards the end, right as we were trying to understand a card, which said that you’re exempt from receiving (negative) poverty points from hand cards, because we hadn’t been taking poverty points for those. Jon couldn’t understand how we missed such a basic rule. Which changes the game considerably, so we’ll have to try it the real way. In our game, Shirley won and Bill came in second.

Awards and Prizes

Saturday night is the main con meeting for everyone, where they announce the bgg game of the year winners and raffle prizes. Jon was also announcing the Spare Squares winners, entry deadline was 5:30 Saturday. When that was planned, he hadn’t realized that Shabbat ends at 6:07, so it was another rush to pack up after Shabbat and get back in time. We made it with 10 minutes to spare, and they didn’t start right at 7. It’s fun to see the game winners announced after reading about it for years on bgg, same for many aspects of the con.

The guy sitting across from me won awards for artwork on two games.

In the end there wasn't time for Jon to come up so Aldie announced the Spare Squares winners. Jon got the envelopes later, there were a lot of entries, and perfect scores where they drew for the winner. I hadn’t understood the tracks, I thought they were by letter, but they were by card section.

We had our raffle tickets but didn't win any prizes like this lucky person.

Occupy bgg.con showed up with signs about Meeple rights.

Agricola

Jon had planned a game of Agricola with friends of his, Jim and Chris. I’d played Puerto Rico with Chris when he visited the group in Jerusalem. Jon had said more could play, Bill decided not to, Shirley was going to work on her laptop, and they also went out to get some dinner. We played in a side room, very calm and quiet. We selected 7 out of 10 for the cards. I had bad cards, and played poorly from the start. Jim was doing really well with tons of food, but then stalled. Jon was doing well, he took actions I wanted a few times, mainly because he was going before me; it didn’t matter since I wasn’t going to win. Jon ended up winning by two, we were the only ones with all our spaces filled, but he had animals and points, I had to kill most of mine for food and never got offspring.

Sunday

Sunday morning we packed and checked out again. Bill and Shirley were leaving to drive back to KC, they dropped us off with our luggage so we could take the shuttle from the Westin.

Last Will

I wanted to play the new game by the Agricola designer, but the games were in progress, I didn’t have that much time, and another game looked like it was starting. I had seen it and it looked interesting, Last Will. It puts you in a counter intuitive situation where you’re trying to spend money rather than save it. As we were starting, a fifth player asked to join, he had played before but not a full game. I asked questions and thought I understood the game, but I got the victory condition wrong. I thought you need to be at zero by the seventh round and then there’s an end game mechanic. But it’s actually a race to see who finishes first, at that point it’s the person with the least including negative money. I don’t know if I could have done better if I had gotten that; I would have done better if I understood everything from the beginning. I came in third, I had two left, the guy who had played before had minus 6 and another one had zero. I don’t think I like the game, it doesn’t feel very strategic, rather tactical and limited control affected by turn order.

Airport

I took the shuttle at 11 for a 1:35 flight to SF which was actually scheduled for 1:48, I didn’t have time for another game anyway. People on the shuttle said there were fewer locals this year, to me it seemed like mostly locals at the con, counting Kansas and Oklahoma. I went through checkin and security in half an hour, it took that long because one self serve kiosk didn’t work and the one I used didn’t print my luggage tag so I had to wait for an agent. I’m used to Newark where everything takes forever.

I found a plug and chair at an adjacent gate, so I couldn’t see my flight info. And I couldn’t get up without packing up my laptop. It needed to charge, and if I got it fully charged I could use it on the plane. At 1:35 I went to see and found out that the flight was delayed at least an hour due to bad weather in SF. So I plugged in again and tried to keep an eye on the far gate. One gate close to me was Chicago, the other one another SF flight. When I heard the SF announcement, I thought it was that flight and not mine, but then I saw people boarding at my gate. We took off at 3:30, with my laptop finally fully charged so that I could finish writing most of this on the plane.

I enjoyed the whole trip with great friends. I had expected to play mostly games that I knew already because it’s harder to learn new games, but learning them with other people at the con worked well, and it’s fun to try out new games. People were very friendly and supportive, and most of the time someone who knew the game explained it which helped. Playing new games is a different challenge than ones you know, and I have more of a chance to do well because focusing on one or two strategies is more likely to work when players haven’t grasped everything.

November 9, 2011

2011-11-09T23:25:00.003+02:00

Gili, Eszter, Emily, Nadine

A short night because I'm leaving for the U.S. tomorrow morning - NY, Kansas City, Dallas and Northern California. Yay bgg.con!

Genoa

Emily 685, Gili 605, Eszter 565, Nadine 525

Emily collected buildings, and at the end paid Eszter 40 for hers, which let Eszter beat me. I was mostly focused on sorting my email before leaving and a work issue, and my son Eli came by. I did complete 4 cards and had three markers on locations. I knocked Gili off one at the end because I thought she was ahead of Emily. After catching on, Eszter exclaimed what a great game this is. We told her that she says that about every game, she agreed. She wanted to know how we find out about all these great games. Whereas Eli, who isn't into these games, commented that they all look the same.

October 26, 2011

2011-10-26T23:52:00.005+02:00

Gili, Eitan, Emily, Eszter, Nadine

Nile
Nadine+, Gili, Emily, Eitan
First play for Emily and Eitan. I had by far the most cards, but had no Papyrus. I still won because everyone was missing at least one type. We like the game as a filler.

Amun Re
Emily 27,50; Nadine 9,41; Eszter 6,39; Eitan 18,36; Gili 12,33
First play for Eszter; Eitan and Emily had played once a very long time ago and didn't really remember much from then. Everyone enjoyed the game. Eitan started off doing well and had a lot of money, Emily had a strong first era and managed to keep the lead. Eszter could have taken one most pyramids instead of tying with me, but if she had then Eitan could have taken the other one from her. She got points for both, gaining the most points in the second era as she caught on to the game. Eszter said her kids would like the game, her son really likes Puerto Rico which she bought after learning it with us this summer, and she plays Settlers with her kids all the time.

October 18, 2011 - Sukkot Games Day

2011-10-21T00:41:00.005+02:00

Nadine, Emily, Eitan, Gili, Jake, Eliezer, Meir, Rochelle, Daphna, Eszter

Rochelle is from Australia and comes regularly to our evening sessions.

Gili, Emily and Eitan are regulars.

Eliezer and Meir came from Beit Shemesh, Eliezer attends the group there, Meir is in yeshiva.

Eszter is originally from Hungary and came a few times during the summer.

Jake is a new oleh from Boston, he's been here 3 weeks.

Daphna is in ulpan, she made aliya 3 months ago from LA. She heard about us from Eitan's mom.

People arrived between 1:30 and 2 pm, and most stayed until 10:30. One additional person emailed for directions, which I didn't see until the evening, but he could have called because my number was in the announcement that he had. My new neighbors who just moved here from Efrat combined their sukkah with ours, so we had a lot of space. And it didn't rain, though it did get cold later in the day.

Carson City

Nadine 44, Emily 40, Gili 35, Eitan 33, Jake 25

We picked this as easier for a new gamer than Amun Re with the auctioning. Jake has played Settlers, but this was his first more complicated game, and it took him a while to understand all the different implications. Emily and Eitan were also pretty new to the game. There was a lot of fighting for everything, and a lot of duels. Last round Gili, Jake and Eitan had 10 cowboys. I managed to get the white cowboy only once, by passing early, for the third round, but that was enough to put me far enough ahead. I had the building discount card the first two rounds, which helped me because I had good buildings and income from the start, and third round the available buildings weren't good and people didn't buy many. This is the first time I understood how the surroundings work for buildings other than mines and ranches, I thought it was buildings and houses, but it's actually only houses.

Eitan robbed people's income several times, Gili fought him but I didn't, he took half of my 15 for a saloon twice. Everyone except me fought for the guns on the last round; I had used all my workers to get money third round so I went last and took the plot card. Gili played well but had bad luck in dice rolls, which Eitan had counted on. Overall people liked the game.

GoSu

Gili and Eitan played during a break.

Taj Mahal

Eitan 61, Eszter 42, Gili 36, Daphna, Jake
Jake left partway through but they continued playing. First play for Jake, Eszter and Daphna, who all enjoyed the game. Eitan said he understood and liked the strategy this time.

R-Eco

Eliezer and Meir played when they arrived and we were still playing Carson City.

We played at the end also:

Eliezer 15, Nadine 10, Emily 7, Meir -1

El Grande
Nadine 30, 76, 107

Eliezer 26, 63, 99

Meir 35, 79, 92

Emily 14, 50, 86

Rochelle 23, 61, 85

First play for Meir and Rochelle, Eliezer explained the game.

Eliezer picked this and was teaching it as we were finishing Carson City, so I joined, and then Emily also did. There was a bit of confusion as we tried to start El Grande, finish and count points for Carson City, and select restaurants and order food. We tried a brand new one, Daisy where Shakespeare used to be, with mixed opinions, and some people ordered from Village Green.

I wasn't ahead until the end and didn't think I'd win. Meir was ahead most of the game, with Eliezer catching up. Other people did things at the end which helped me, such as special scoring. My region was New Castille which I don't like because it's competitive and in the middle, but someone put the 4-0-0 scoreboard there which helped me because then everyone stayed out of the region. Until the very end, when two others went there from the castillo, matching my 3 pieces, and giving all of us 0.

The scoring round before, no one challenged Meir in Granada because we all thought everyone else would go there, there was duplication in where we went from the castillo. Rochelle caught on and played well, but hurt herself by making her Old Castille region too competitive with the 9 point scoreboard. People put large numbers of pieces into the castillo, and then crowded small regions such as Aragon and Seville.

Lo Ra
Emily 8, 19, 39

Nadine 10, 13, 28

Meir 0, 9, 26

Eliezer 5, 3, 22

Eliezer really liked my Jewish theming and pictures, he had played regular Ra. It was hard to get everything we needed. Eliezer took a large set at the end of one round, and Meir got the three items he wanted at the end of the game before the last auction tile.

Tangrams

Daphna got this recently so we played a few cards after everyone else left. The wooden pieces are nice.

October 05. 2011

2011-10-06T23:15:00.002+02:00

Gili, Eitan, Emily, Nadine

R-Eco

Emily 18, Nadine 2, Eitan 1

We managed to end with positive scores. Emily had most of the chips. We played with random piles, the -2s showed up early. Everyone dumped.

Stone Age

Nadine 186, Eitan 136, Emily 131, Gili 120

The first time I've won this. I used the starvation strategy and it actually worked. Last time I tried it I decided too late, after I already was up 2 on the food track. I paid for food my first two turns and on the last one. I had no picture cards, but I had multipliers, and I rolled well. I ended with 9 people and 9 buildings. Eitan did well but took cards instead of buildings on the last round, so I got 3 buildings. Eitan and Emily competed with Gili for picture cards, and Gili had terrible luck with rolls. She had 6 picture cards, Eitan and Emily 3 each. We had a lot of tough choices with good card options.

Tribune

Eitan+, Nadine, Emily

We agreed this was our most boring time playing this game. It's less competitive with 3 players, more mechanical. I started with two factions first round, and didn't get another one until the last round. Eitan and Emily took a lot of factions, and with a lot of high cards. We played with 4 victory conditions. When Eitan won, I had 3 victory conditions, and was 3 laurels away from the fourth. Emily had one victory condition, but would have reached four next round. Emily went first on a round when two leaders were available together. Eitan forgot that he was getting the last laurel he needed from the purple faction. He had faction markers, laurels, tribune and favor of the gods. I had favor of the gods, legions and money.

September, 21, 2011

2011-09-22T22:28:00.002+03:00

Participants: Nadine, Emily, Eitan, Rachelle, Gili

Taj Mahal

Gili 47, Eitan 44, Rachelle 38, Nadine 33, Emily 31

Gili brought this. First play for Emily and Rachelle, and Eitan only played once. Eitan was ahead most of the game, Emily seemed to be doing well too. Rachelle caught on well and had the yellow two-point card half the game, but would have done some things differently if she had realized about the cards points at the end. I saved cards for 17 points, which wasn't enough, I would have done better by competing more. Gili had 3 more cards than Eitan at the end so she won.

Lo Ra

Eitan 41, Emily 32, Rachelle 33, Nadine 11

Eitan 4, 14 41 (scores each round)
Emily 6, 11, 32
Rachelle 3, 6, 33
Nadine 9, 12, 11

I was ahead first round. We had a lot of fun with the tension at the end of the rounds. Rachelle was left last twice, once she took one tile, once 4, all before the last auction tile turned up.

Emily and Eitan played Railroad Tycoon in Copenhagen last night, and saw real Ra game boxes. Next game night in two weeks.

September 07, 2011

2011-09-08T23:22:00.000+03:00

Participants: Gili, Eitan, Emily, Rachelle, Nadine

A lively session with a new player, we ordered burgers from Flame. Rachelle is from Australia, here for her second year doing a post-doc at Hebrew U, Eitan and Emily met her through Shani.

Lo Ra

Emily 42, Rachelle 23, Nadine 18, Gili 15

Gili would have beaten me but I had one more coin. The game is fun, and people are catching on. Rachelle did a good job, she had a lot of Tribes. It's different with 4 players, you only get 3 coins.

It's Alive

Eitan 63, Rachelle 51, Nadine 50, Gili 44, Emily 42

This engendered a discussion about which were arms and which were legs, some people saw it the reverse of what it is. A lot of auctioning at the beginning. Emily's score was the same as in Lo Ra.

Louis XIV

Emily 49, Nadine 48, Gili 44, Eitan 44

Gili wanted to try a variant she came up with: the basic mission cards score 5 as usual, but the medium ones score 6, and the advanced ones 7. I don't think it made much of a difference because everyone had a pretty similar mix.

A hard fought game with a lot of thinking. First play for Eitan and Emily, Gili taught the game.

August 30, 2011

2011-08-31T11:23:00.000+03:00

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Eitan, Emily

Hive

Eitan+ Nadine

We played when Eitan arrived first. I had printed out the rules, but forgot that my version has different animals so I had to translate them. I do own a game but it's somewhere else. Eitan caught on and thought and planned well.

Lo Ra

Nadine 52 Eitan 35 Gili 10

We played correctly this time except I didn't check who starts first in new Yovels, we just kept going in order. First Yovel I had 7, Eitan -5 and Gili -6. Next one I had 26, Eitan 6 and Gili -5. It seemed like luck that things worked out for me, though I did decide well on calling auctions several times, and second Yovel I had two auctions to myself because I'd had low money amounts. It's an interesting game.

Shadows Over Camelot

We won! 4 players, no traitor. We waited to add a traitor after six swords, but then decided we better not, it would be too hard to win. And Gili didn't want to get the traitor card.

Citadels

Nadine 25, Emily 23, Eitan 22, Gili 16

Emily and Eitan brought two of the few games they have, this and Gosu. They like Citadels and play a lot, but the two-player game is different, faster and better. I didn't like the game, too random; Emily and Eitan didn't like it as much 4-player. I focused on finishing the game to get the extra points even though I didn't calculate whether I would win, ending was my best chance.

The Game of Life

Eitan 2,800,000 Gili 2,115,000 Emily 1,705,000 Nadine 1,625,000

Gili wanted to check this out for her kids, and we ended up playing it because the others hadn't seen the newer version that I have. Gili decided it was very similar to her Pirate version so didn't borrow it. I like not going to college, my salary was fine, and I switched with Emily's 100,000 towards the middle, then Eitan took it from me near the end. I still wouldn't have won, but I lost a lot by selecting Millionaire Estates. Even though I had more money than Eitan who went there too, he took 3 Life cards away from me when the pile ran out, and the 4 I gained were all only 50,000, so I lost a few hundred thousand there. Eitan had a lot of Life tiles.

August 24, 2011

2011-08-24T23:56:00.000+03:00

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Eitan

Nadine takes over the session reports. Game night was at her house.

Emily wasn't feeling well, refua shlema!

Set

Nadine+, Gili, Eitan

Eitan arrived and joined when we were almost done.

A Touch of Evil

Nadine+, Gili, Eitan

Gili brought this, we'd played it once and she played it one other time. Eitan was interested in trying it. We all agreed it was anti-climactic, a lot of build-up for a 2-roll battle at the end. I was behind in cards and power, but was in the right position to be able to fight first, and the werewolf only had 5 combat. I almost lost, but someone else would have won if I hadn't tried. Gili bought the first Lair after it went down to cost 3, but couldn't reach the spot on her next turn despite having a 2 horse. I couldn't reach my spot either, but it was my turn next. Gili thinks the advanced game should be better.

Ra (my Lo Ra version)

Nadine 66, Eitan 31, Gili 19

I won due to experience and luck, first game for both Eitan and Gili. And I didn't remember the rules so well, we haven't played in years, so that affected my explanation and made the game harder for them. They liked the game, and understood it by the second round. We played a few things wrong, like allowing auctions after the last auction card, not playing disasters immediately, not bidding on just the money tile if there weren't other tiles, and not having an auction when the track was full. I remembered most of the correct rules but we had already started playing wrong so we continued.

August 10, 2011

2011-08-12T00:14:00.000+03:00

Participants: Nadine, Esther, Jon

I had to come to Jerusalem this week. Even though most everyone else on vacation, Esther was available this one more week, but going on vacation herself next week. So Nadine invited her over to play.

It's Alive

Esther, Nadine

Nadine taught Esther the basic version. She liked the game. Nadine had two 10 point coffins and would have come within 3 points of winning in the advanced version.

Puerto Rico

Esther 53, Nadine 47+, Jon 47-

I thought I was doing ok. However, my shipping was terrible, and I began to realize that as the end-game started. I had 11 shipping points, while both Nadine and Esther had 20 or more. My superior building wasn't enough to make up for it.

Esther pretty much played on her own; once or twice we led her through a play to explain all the implications. She decided to start with Hacienda instead of Small Market, letting Nadine take it instead. She did well with it, netting a tobacco, corn, and coffee. Esther also had a coffee monopoly. I had no quarries and a de-facto tobacco monopoly. Yet I took Guild Hall around mid/end game when I should have taken Harbor. I ended with two big buildings. Nadine ended with one big building, though she had both Factory and Harbor for half of the game.

Princes of Florence

Nadine 63+, Jon 63-, Esther 53ish

First play for Esther. it's very hard to figure out your auction strategy during the first few rounds of your first game. I got three Jesters on rounds 1, 2, and 4, all for 7-800, so I was feeling pretty good, though I was spending more than my opponents. Nadine took two early Prestige cards. I took three later ones, though the last one was by default on the last round when I had nothing better to do (come to think of it, I think I could have earned one more point with a Recruiter) and Esther had taken the landscape that I needed. The last Prestige card earning me 0 points.

Still, I earned 12 points from my other two. I had best work every round that I played a work (3 or 4 rounds). So how did I lose? Nadine had more works, more buildings, and spent less money, I guess. I don't know.

August 03, 2011

2011-08-05T16:51:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Esther

Nadine, I, and Saarya were the only three participants at the first "official" JSGC night back in October 2003, so it's only right that Nadine, I and someone are the only members at the last JSGC night that I shepherd (for the foreseeable future). Esther is new; she called me on Sunday having just heard about the club. She was rather disappointed to learn that I was leaving the group and handing it off to Nadine and Gili.

But, after all, with attendance between 2 and 4 every week, it's gotten pretty pathetic. Our regulars weren't.

Some of them said that they were busy during the academic year, or busy on Wednesdays, and might be able to come again starting soon. Esther enjoyed her game tonight and wants to come again. We will see. It's up to Nadine and Gili, now.

It's Alive

Nadine 52, Jon 43

We weren't sure if anyone else was coming. I had packed all my games away and moved them to Raanana, so we met at Nadine's house. This was one of the few two-player short games that she had available.

Despite the fact that I count points and Nadine doesn't, she beat me handily. Apparently I still don't quite know what I'm doing in this game.

Puerto Rico

Nadine 56, Jon 42

The ignominy. In what I thought would be the group's last game, Nadine beat me handily again. Mostly because she started with corn and I had allowed Harbor in the game, when I usually replace it with Large Business. Nadine had both Factory and Harbor, despite not having a trade good.

Jon 53+, Esther 53-, Nadine 50

I left after the two-player game, thinking that we were done, but after I left I got a call from Nadine that Esther had shown up after all, so I came back. Esther had played Settlers of Catan. We thought it a reasonable choice to try her on Puerto Rico.

It was a good choice. She loved the game. We played with the straight up standard set of buildings. Nadine took an early Harbor over Factory, and she also had a coffee monopoly and bought Guild Hall. However, she sat to my left, and I managed to block many of her moves during the game. She often only had one boat on which to ship and she didn't get any corn until the last few turns of the game.

I was pretty sure that Esther was winning by a good 7 points of so. She was shipping well, trading tobacco, had a Factory and Wharf, had two big buildings, and was the only one to complete her board. But we ended up tying because I had Harbor and better control of the boats. I won the tie with 4 corn barrels and a doubloon versus Esther's 4 doubloons.

And that was the end.

July 26, 2011

2011-07-27T23:39:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ben, Gili

My brother showed up, mostly to collect things I'm giving away. :-)

Carson City

Nadine 56, Ben 50, Jon 50, Gili 43

Scores approximate. First play for Ben. This game, like Endeavor, is deceptively slow in the first round or two only to explode in the last rounds. This must be the first game in a really, really long time that I had to think for an extended period of time before deciding on a move - not once, but twice. Both times were for role selection.

Like all but the first two times we've played, I reduced the gun bonus from three to two (though it still counts for three when calculating gun spaces) on both the role and the "three gun" board space. I found that three guns was just too many; it essentially meant automatic victory on all future gun battles. That meant that, if you were fighting someone in several spaces, this battle determined all other spaces, which was too much to decide with a single die roll.

Ben points out that reducing the "three guns" space to two guns only nets you a single gun gain, since you have to give up a guy to take it, and the guy counts as a gun, anyway. Not to mention that, if you fight someone for the gun, they get their guy back, netting them a one gun gain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Trust me. It still works much better this way. In fact, there was no lack of people fighting for the "three gun" spot, which proves my point. On the other hand, no one took the gun role this game, but he has been chosen many times in previous games, so there.

Anyhoo, I took a strong start, while Ben made a small error in understanding one of the buildings, so he gained a little less income than he was anticipating. Nadine and Ben were hot on my heels by round two, however, and Nadine passed me by round three. I still had more building points than she did.

In round four, however, I chose roles last. Ben took the sheriff gaining him a 5/1 trade, while Gili and Nadine both took the roles that let them store $60, giving them a lot of 6/1 trade. That left me with roles letting me store a maximum of $30. Advantage Nadine.

Then Ben and Nadine fought over one of the scoring spaces, Ben lost the die roll even though he was up on the tie, and Nadine took the five points that Ben would have taken. If the single die roll had gone the other way, Bwn would have won instead of Nadine. And that's why we all hate dice.

July 19, 2011

2011-07-21T10:58:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili

Attendance is still so low, it's hard to feel too bad about leaving Jerusalem. I'd like to stay and keep a good club going, but three people week after week is not much of a club. Hopefully things will pick up again if/when Nadine and Gili take over.

Quest Adventure Cards

Jon 43, Nadine 34

I was sent this to review. I received six packs (1 through 6), which is enough for a two player game. You can play up to four with more packs.

I will give a full review on Purple Pawn soon. Nadine and I played only one game. It was, at least, a quick playing game, but only because the decisions were either trivial, luck-based, or irrelevant. Maybe I'm missing something.

Nadine didn't understand the point count at the end. Actually, now that I remember the rules correctly, since the sixth quest wasn't completed, the game actually ended in a tie.

Santiago

Nadine 132, Jon 122, Gili

This is not really meant to be a three player game; there's too much water and the water carrier makes no money. What's left is calculating the amount of money spent vs money returned compared to the other players, which is still fun to those who like that sort of thing.

I gobbled up a center potato field and got some cubes on some of Nadine's fields. Gili had a smaller field, and we were all pretty sure that I was going to win by a bit. But Nadine spent almost zero money on the bidding, while I was down to about 5 dollars before the final tally. She won due to frugal spending.

Cities and Knights of Catan

Nadine 13, Jon 11, Gili 11

Although I often complain that I'm losing when it feels like I'm losing, but stop complaining when I see that I'm actually doing ok, in this game I really really felt like I was losing and I was really really surprised to see that I actually came fairly close to winning.

Though I didn't start the game with either 6 or 8, I had good and varied numbers and resources on my starting hexes - except sheep. I even pulled an early Inventor and switched away an 11 for a 9. Wouldn't you know it, but 11 and 8 rolled up time and time again, with barely any occurrences of 5, 9, or 10 over the entire game.

As a result, I watched Nadine and Gili pull resource after resource while I collected the occasional brick or ore. Nadine's hand already had over ten cards several times before the barbarians hit, and she maintained a large hand throughout the game.

Gili and Nadine both got to an early/mid-game Aqueduct, while I didn't get to it until near the end game. Wow, is it hard to do ANYTHING without Aqueduct. I already knew it's the most important strategy in the game, and I still keep underestimating it.

Nadine had early knight control. Gili got the first metropolis (paper) and took over the knights around mid-game. I managed to disappoint them both by failing to activate a single knight, twice losing cities to the barbarians in the process.

Despite this, and my paucity of building and resources, I finally got a harbor and a string of 4s to give me a metropolis in coins. I was sitting on the merchant card. I came so close to 12, only to lose a city (twice) or be off by a single resource each time.

Nadine missed an opportunity to end the game through stealing my coin metropolis, but she managed to get her 13th point anyway on the next turn.

July 13, 2011

2011-07-14T12:11:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Christian, David K, Nadine, Gili, Shmuel

Christian is a visitor from Germany who will be in Israel for a month. Shmuel is Gili's nephew, who will also be in Israel for a month.

San Juan

David 41, Jon 38, Christian 32, Nadine 27

Christian had played this once a while ago; it has been supplanted in his group by Race for the Galaxy. I changed the Guild Hall to only give 2 points for each type of production building.

No one built a Prefecture, but David built a fairly early Library. And he still built a complete Guild Hall. I had Aqueduct and Wishing Well going. Nadine was behind in buildings.

Odin's Ravens

Shmuel, Gili

Gili relearned this game and taught it to Shmuel. Shmuel won the first race after Gili extended the board several times. They ended the game after the one race.

Homesteaders

Jon 56, Christian 49, David 34

First play for Christian. One my, and David's, favorites. I racked up some early debt, eventually hitting 5 debt chips, which had me worried. Also, I'm usually able to buy Church by round 6 or 7; when I couldn't, largely because I wasn't producing any trade goods (gold, cow, or copper), I was concerned. David had both Gold Mines; however, he didn't have a single trade chip producing building. He was taking trade chips, instead of more valuable goods, when he moved forward on the railroad track.

In the end I was able to cancel all but three of my debt chips, though just barely.

Tribune

Nadine+, Gili, Shmuel

First play for Shmuel. I didn't see how it went.

Tichu

Jon/David 600, Nadine/Christian 200

First play for Christian. We played five hands. I bid and made one Tichu and one Grand Tichu, both by the skin of my teeth. I bid the Grand Tichu with AKQJT92 and the Phoenix.

July 07, 2011

2011-07-07T14:33:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili

Down to the stalwarts.

A Touch of Evil

Jon+, Nadine, Gili

Gili just got this game and brought it over, eager to try it out. I had rather low expectations. Nadine was concerned about the theme, since she doesn't like horror.

These type of games, like some FFG games, are high on beautifully illustrated components and themes but revolve around simple random mechanics, like dice rolling or card flipping. I don't find the games to be interesting; actually, that's an understatement. This game is just like those; it's a fine game for people who like to roll, roll, roll, dice and pick cards with random effects that can help or hurt you, without any influence as to the results of the rolls or card picks. I found the experience of playing the game to be (nearly) physically painful.

Each player is a piece on the board with a random special ability and some stats. Each round you roll to see how many spaces you can move and then you pick a card from the deck of the location to which you traveled. The card can be good, bad, or in between. Many make you roll dice. Some dice rolls make you roll more dice. If you encounter a monster, you get to roll and roll until one of you is dead. Certain cards you may have saved, or that others may have saved, can be played on your combat to make you re-roll dice or otherwise hurt or help you.

Eventually, you have collected enough items and feel comfortable enough to fight the Boss. Then you do. Each Boss has its own special ability, of course. Roll and roll until one of you is dead. If you beat the Boss, you win the game. All of this is done with beautiful pieces and tons of counters. But only a few of the counters (Boss' minions) are used each game, so the enemies become repetitive.
There is a cooperative way to play with a bigger Boss and more bad events happening, but I hear tell that the tension isn't really high compared to other cooperative games. There is also an advanced way to play with more special powers and effects, which would add more thematic color to the game without changing the basic idea: pick an action and then randomly resolve it. Ugh.

I grimaced the entire time without trying to be a complete sourpuss. I don't think I wrecked the experience for Nadine or Gili, both of whom appeared to like the game. Nadine liked it because most of the effects were positive effects. Gili liked it because it would probably be a big hit with her teenager.

Naturally, I had several of my "luck moments". During one fight, I had to score a single hit to kill the monster, and I needed to roll a 5 or a 6 on any of five dice to do so. I rolled all five dice and didn't get above a 3 on any of them, so the fight continued to the next round. On the next round I did it again with the same result. And then again. Finally I rolled a single 6 on the fourth round. I finally killed the 1 HP monster, just as he simultaneously killed me. Then I rolled a d6 to see how much of my treasure I lost for dying, and naturally I rolled a 6.

Still, I went on to win. How? Nadine tried to fight the Boss first, but she rolled really terribly and the monster rolled really well, so she died. Then I tried. I rolled really well, and the monster rolled really terribly, so I won.

Wow.

Vegas Showdown

Jon+, Nadine, Gili

I don't remember the final scores, but I was about 8-10 points ahead of Gili and Nadine who were within a point of each other. All of us filled in both colored sections and also connected our two entryways. The game ended when Nadine filled in her entire board, the first time I ever saw that happen.

I won because of a solid early income, being able to pay for points in one round when they couldn't, being able to outbid Gili one time when I needed to, and Gili and Nadine both spending all their money on middleweight buildings on the penultimate rounds, leaving the last heavyweight building for me.

June 29, 2011

2011-07-01T17:46:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, Tzvi Yehuda

Small nights bode ill for the future of the JSGC. This game night was interrupted in the middle. I had to run out at 8:30. Game night continued at Nadine's.

Canal Mania

Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, Tzvi Yehuda

First play for all of us. I think I played or watched a game of this at a BGG.con, which is why I asked for it as my secret santa gift. Unfortunately, the game did not succeed with our group.

Canal Mania is a light "train" game, i.e. route connection game. It's a little heavier than Ticket to Ride or La Strada, but lighter than Steam. The game's core mechanics are not complicated. However, each mechanic has a slew of very specific provisions and exceptions that make the game harder to learn than it would first appear. Undoubtedly these niggly rules were added after much play-testing, and it's clear to see how some of them add to the interest of the game or prevent certain problems. But there's something wrong: niggly rules that have no thematic purpose. They make it seems like there is something wrong with the core design, but it's just managing to hold together.

In the third of a game that we played, I didn't see any major flaws with the game. Aside from the fact that no one else was able to think on any other players' turn, despite that their turn pretty much didn't affect yours, I was interested enough to continue. This is because I love route building games, unless they're flawed. The others don't feel that way. They found the game uninspiring, not interesting like Steam or Power Grid, and not painless and intuitive like Ticket to Ride (which they don't like much, either).

None of them were unhappy to end the game when I was called away at 8:30. I fear that the game isn't going to be played again by us.

El Grande

Gili 103, Nadine 101, Binyamin 95, Tzvi Yehuda 93

Nadine continues the report: From the games I have, some people would have played PR, some Shadows, but everyone agreed to play my new El Grande, which I didn't think I'd ever get to use.

Binyamin wanted to handicap me 10 or 20 points, but I never win 4 player, and not even always with 5.

Scores each round:

Gili 30 63 103
Nadine 27 53 101
Binyamin 27 57 95
Tzvi Yehuda 27 53 93

It was very close first round. Later Zvi Yehuda was doing well for a while, which caused him to get attacked. I was way in last place, not reflected in the scoring. Gili was hard to attack. When I had played my 1 to play the 13 on the last turn of the second round, the second king came up. Binyamin protected his high scoreboard at the end when he selected for the Castillo; he would have done better somewhere else. Gili played the Castillo and mobile scoreboards well.

June 22, 2011

2011-06-23T22:21:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, Tikva Shira

Nadine returned, as did Binyamin, giving us a more normal session than last week's.

As I noted on my blog, I will be moving to Raanana in August. The fate of the JSGC will be left in the hands of Nadine and Gili. Hopefully they will be able to keep it going while I'm gone (at least a year, maybe more).

Fairy Tale

Jon 39, Nadine 35, Gili 35

I saw that several of my cards were going to be worthless by the end of the game, so I was pretty sure I was going to lose. How did I win? Seven of the nine cards I scored averaged 6 points or so. Nadine and Gili had several cards that scored only 2 to 4 points each.

Navegador

Gili 70, Nadine 70, Binyamin 69, Tikva Shira 67, Jon 62

I requested this, since I loved it the one time I played it. Binyamin thoughtfully brought it. First play for everyone else except for Binyamin.

I may love it, but I'm also bad at it, or at least I'm bad at the strategy; the tactics I can handle. I bought an early ship-building house and had essentially no income for the next fifteen turns. Everyone else had little houses or colonies and raked in 100+ income on markets; I pulled in 20 or 30, and I couldn't afford to buy houses or colonies, which made is a catch-22. (Binyamin, with his extra sail action, swooped in and took the only colony I could have afforded.) I figured that this early mistake set me back about ten moves. And I barely even used that ship-building house during the game.

By the end of the game, when everyone else was pulling 250+ or more from markets, I was finally pulling around 100. I scored as well as I did because, other than that early mistake, I get the tactics of games like this. I can focus on points in a game rich with intriguing mechanics that distract from the end-scoring. As I said, I love the game. I just have to figure out how to play my start-game correctly.

T"S was the first to pull ahead in worker-building advancement, and Gili followed. Nadine had the most ships and the most blue disks. Binyamin had the most colonies.

Set

Jon 12, Tikva Shira 8, Nadine 4, Binyamin

There wasn't time for a full game, so we let T"S choose a short game. Binyamin would have gotten more points if he had been actually playing. Which is odd, since he's pretty colorblind.

Bridge

Jon/Nadine 550, Binyamin/Tikva Shira 0

Three hands of Bridge. Nadine and I set them one trick in two hands, and we bid and made one game in the other.

June 16, 2011

2011-06-16T22:08:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili

I thought that missing a week would bring extra people this week. Instead we get a number I don't expect unless it's August (when everyone is on vacation). Actually, Nadine is on vacation.

Guardians of Graxia

Jon 65, Gili 26

A bit of a blowout, as you can see. This was the second play for both of us. Gili won her first game against two other people at Games Day. The one time I played, my opponent and I discovered the numerous rules we were playing incorrectly. So this was my first play with the correct rules.

I think. The rulebook it lacking. Many simple and obvious questions are not clearly answered. For instance, there are four decks of cards, and four cards from each deck are face up in the "draw area" at all times. The game ends when a particular one of these decks (the monster deck) runs out. Does that mean "the deck", or does it also include the four face up cards from that deck? There's a spell that lets you draw cards when you play it during combat; can you play it and then play the rest of your spells, or do you have to play all spells at once (and therefore can't rely on drawing more spells as the result of this card)? How many cards can you buy each turn? Etc.

In a two-player game, when the monster deck consists of an entire 10 cards, this makes a big difference. We played that the deck and all four face up cards had to leave play for the game to end. It seemed too short, otherwise.

In this game I found that an early heavy money strategy worked well. It worked, in fact, rather too well, as you can see from the end scores. If you can buy early high powered cards, not only are you far more powerful, you also have more early victory points (which, unlike Dominion, don't hurt you). I expect that you could try to attack rich players, who have probably neglected some offense or defense capabilities in order to get their money. But the window of opportunity for doing so is very tight, since, owing to the limited size of the initial deck and the vast amounts of cards you can draw due to early purchases, you can play your high powered cards by turn three or four (like I did).

That's not the big problem with the game, if all players can do the same thing, more or less, and I expect that some other strategies will show themselves after additional plays.

The problem with the game is its reliance on a "these cards are available for purchase, and each card is replaced by one from the deck" mechanic, a mechanic that has destroyed (or nearly destroyed) countless games. La Citta is an example. Unless you have some ability to pay to cycle away all of the cards on the table in favor of a fresh batch, you eventually end up with the great dead pool of low-powered cards that nobody wants. Therein lies stagnation.

Owing to my early wealth, I pretty much sucked the pool dry by mid-game. Only by sacrificing myself (or by my opponent doing so) was there any possibility of buying new cards, and each of these appeared one by one. We then immediately bought the good ones when they came out, if we were lucky, or left a good one for our opponent if we were unlucky enough to turn it over after we had finished buying our own cards. Ho hum. Please, designers: don't do this.

I'm thinking of allowing players to cycle one or more cards as an action. In fact, I'm definitely allowing players to do so.

The "bonus"es earned from killing the monsters are additional cards from the dead pool, which wasn't thrilling. I ended up buying any card with a victory point on it just to keep things cycling. Of course, eventually none of the cards even had victory points on them.

What kept the game interesting was planning attacks against monsters and fellow players (I wouldn't have attacked Gili, but Gili wanted there to be at least some inter-player combat during the game, so I killed one of her armies). The success of these attacks relies partly on the play and partly on what spells you drew, which keeps it fresh.

The game went down a point in my ratings. However, I would still play it to explore other kinds of strategies; though it's hard to see how you can complete with early, repeatable cash.

Jambo

Gili 63, Jon 61

I wasn't a fan of Jambo, nor am I a fan of the other two-player Kosmos games (having played two others). Gili likes the series more than I do. I hadn't played Jambo in a sufficient amount of time to make me wonder if there was anything I should be missing. Actually, there was. Well, there's more to the game than there is to Odin's Raven, in any case.

Again I took a commanding lead, and both of us were pretty sure that I was going to win by a fair amount. We both had three items working for us, and Guardians exactly when we needed to prevent others from destroying them.

I was a bit luckier with some of my draws. I reached 25 quickly, and then (dropping down and up again, of course) went to 30, 40, and finally 46, while Gili was only slowly climbing to 25 and then 30. She had a marketful of goods, though.

Finally, on my turn, Gili had a choice of paying me 2 coins or letting me take two cards. She paid me the two coins, bringing me to 48. I played a card that let me dump my remaining 6 goods for 2 each, bringing me to 60. And I took 1 more coin instead of my final two actions, for a net of 61. Gili still had 30.

Gili top-decked the 6-good card. She cashed it for 18, and then another for 12, tossed her last good for two more (with the same card that I had used), and somehow earned one more on her last action. Net total: 63.

I bowed to her superior play.

June 01, 2011

2011-06-02T14:07:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, David K

Quiet night.

Saikoro

Jon+, Gili

Gili is not into abstracts, but she agreed to try this quick game. I vaguely recall that when I first got the game, I could shake the dice while they were in the box; I see that this is not possible, so my memory must be faulty. This inability detracts from the ease of setting up the game.

Otherwise, it's a very nice, quick, and pretty abstract game.

San Juan

Gili 36, Jon 33, Nadine 24

We had some trouble coming up with a filler game to play until Gili finally suggested this. I played several buildings to help my production and trading, and a Smithy. I had all 12 buildings built, two of them large buildings, and a Chapel going, too. But, in the end, Gili got a mid-game Guild Hall and that was that.

Time to a) change Guild Hall or b) disallow multiples of production buildings. It's simply too unbalancing. This happens in nearly every game.

Homesteaders

Gili 58, Jon 56, Nadine 51, David 50

Gili suggested this and I never turn this game down, as it's my favorite game (or thereabouts, anyway). It's enjoyable the first few times, and gets better as you learn all the possibilities. I can see that I'll want some variant buildings maybe a few dozen more plays down the line; but we have a long way to go before that happens.

I thought I started out ok. I managed a good balance of trade chips. But I realized on turn five that I was severely lacking in trade goods: no gold, cows, or copper. Thus, I wasn't able to take Church on round 5 or 6 like I generally aim for. Instead, Gili was the one with the early gold mine, and David swiped the other one. Gili saw me going for Church on round 7 and easily stole it from me.

I finally acquired good resources (a cow machine) and money as we neared the end, but not with enough sway to get the two Railroad Stations; David took those, though he paid a lot of resources to do so (bidding 16 in round 10, plus the coast of the three buildings). He didn't have enough in the way of other VPs and he lost a lot paying off his final debts.

Just like San Juan, Gili had fewer buildings than I did but beat me by a few points. Nadine passed a few too many times, taking the 3 points on the railroad track at least twice.

Shipyard

Jon 83, Nadine 78, David 53

First play for David. I thought I could teach this quickly and we could play it fairly quickly (only 25 actions for each player, after all). I taught it quickly. And it didn't appear to bog down at any point. But it took longer than I anticipated, around 2 hours. David had to leave before the last two turns were taken, so we played his turns for him.

We also played the missions correctly for the first time. In previous games we simply kept all of our missions, having missed the little note where it says to discard one of each color after the first and second passes.

I chose the 6 points per ship with smokestack, sail, and propeller over the 4 points per used water tile. The latter can be nice, but there's no way to get multiple water tiles in a single action. My other mission was 3/10/17 points for 6 piece ships. I ended with 35 points from my missions, far more than David's 22 and Nadine's 18 or so.

My three boats scores 15, 15, and 18. Nadine's one big boat scored 30 (10 speed, and landing on a 10 space flag, plus assorted other scoring features, and another scored pretty well, too. David concentrated on his missions, which included double smokestacks and number of ships, but missed out on some other scoring possibilities on the way. One of his boats only scored two points.

David adds: I had actually given up on winning quite a bit earlier. My strategy had been based on my bonus cards. I think if I had known how to play better it might even have been viable, but for a newbie it was WAY too ambitious as it required me to sail 6 ships. When I realized (fairly early) that I wouldn't be able to accomplish that I took your advice on setting a lower goal for the game.

Nadine adds: I had 15 bonus from having everything [every type of item] and 8 or 10 from blue and yellow cards, more than 18 [this works out to 23 or 25]. It's hard to work on two bonuses at once, and we used to play with six.

May 24, 2011

2011-05-26T00:47:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Adam, Valla, Binyamin

I had a conflict on Wednesday, so we switched to Tuesday. Adam can't come on Wednesdays, so he came, bringing his gf Valla.

Dominion/Intrigue/+

Jon 39, Adam 29, Valla 5

First play for Valla, second for Adam. It was perhaps not the easiest of all sets for new players, but there you go.

Kingdoms: Remodel, Council Room, Secret Chamber, Swindler, Minion, Trading Post, Tribute, Navigator, Loan, City

Lots of trashing. Lots of remodeling coppers into Secret Chambers. A few curses gained, but these were also remodeled. Valla had decent cards, but she didn't use them to gain points until very late.

Adam bought two early five cost cards before either of us (Tributes), and also bought the first Province, forgoing his first jump to 8 for a gold. I took City and Council Room, then Tributes. Eventually I had two turns of 16+ with two buys = 2 Provinces. The first one put me ahead of Adam; the second one was pretty much game.

On the last turn, Valla finally got a turn like mine, chaining City's and card drawing. Unfortunately, she played a Swindler. Adam turned over a Province, and he then took the last Province. Valla could only buy a Duchy.

Vinhos

Binaymin 72, Gili 64, Nadine 56

Fist play for Nadine and Gili. It took an awfully long time to explain the game, some 45 minutes. They were still going after we had finished both a slow game of Dominion and Settlers of Catan.

Settlers of Catan

Valla 10, Adam 7, Jon 7

First play for Valla, and as usual, the new player won. She started off with a strong road that cut the island in two; her Road Building card didn't hurt there. No one else was going to steal Longest Road from her (at least, not easily).

Adam mistakenly places his initial settlements on essentially two resources - wood and wheat - and a 2 ore spot. 2 rolled up a number of times, however, and he reaped his ore.

Tobago

Binyamin 56, Nadine 41, Jon 34

We play without the curses. Not much to say about the game.

May 18, 2011

2011-05-20T12:53:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, David K, Nadine, Zachary, Eliezer

I lost my notes, again. I picked up David and brought him home with me. While waiting for others to show up, David created a pile of Magic card for us to draft from later in the evening.

Glory to Rome

Nadine 15, Eliezer 15, David 10, Zachary 9, Jon 9

First game for Zachary, second game for David and Eliezer. I started with a simple brown building and then began a Catacombs, on the theory that a partially built Catacombs would give me the flexibility to end the game when I wanted and protect me from Forums. It didn't work for me, and I didn't complete any other building by the end of the game (which ended with David's Catacombs). I lost out on the utility that other buildings could have supplied in the meantime.

I'm not sure that the strategy was entirely bad; I may have been unlucky. By the way, my other six points came from a single stashed purple card and the bonus for most purple cards.

Nadine built an early killer combo: two brown clients, the building that doubles her client abilities, and the building that increases her hand size to 9. Each round she drew back up to 9 cards, and on each brown action she started AND completed two or three buildings.

All her points were in buildings.

Eliezer built the second most amount of buildings, and also had six points from a stashed blue card and the blue bonus. David was almost as far behind as I was, and he completed Catacombs to put us out of our misery.

Sticheln

Eliezer, Zachary, Nadine

Zach didn't have much more time, so Eliezer taught Nadine and him a round of this game. Meanwhile, David and I drafted our Magic decks.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 100something, David around 20 points behind, Eliezer, Jon

First play for Eliezer. I went in to this game not a fan of the game, and I ended even less of a fan; I'll be dropping it a point on my ranking. It's not that I don't see that there is strategy to work out, which David and Nadine have worked out better than I have. It's that the entire thing bores me. I don't really know why. It's just not compelling. Notre Dame, to which this game has been compared but is a less punishing game, doesn't bother me as much, and compels me slightly more (slightly).

David took a commanding early lead on the turn order track and stayed there the entire game, though I cam close enough to worry him occasionally. He took strong books, earning 9 points a pop during the last few rounds. However, he eventually lost all of his guys on the last round. Nadine built out to four or five huts, took a first round double dragon, and an early princess. She kept six guys and nine buddha points.

I managed to keep eight guys in four huts and a fourth round single dragon and a sixth round princess. No buddhas.

Magic: The Gathering

Jon++, David+

This was the second time in a row that I've beaten David. He won the first game handily and I was sure that my deck wasn't going to do much, even though it didn't look too bad: black with splashes of red and white, 15 creatures, creature kill cards, and the flagbearer enchantment. The latter is a pretty unassuming card that worked wonders when I brought it out, just like it did the last time I played with it. The enchantment redirects any targeted spell or ability cast by the opponent onto the enchanted creature.

I won the second game with some selective creature kill, followed by a standoff and a Last Ditch Effort, and the third after a long battle, followed by sacrificing some Clerics (shapeshifters, actually) each netting 2 loss of life to him and 2 gain for me.

May 11, 2011

2011-05-12T22:16:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Eliezer, Nadine, Yaakov

Eliezer joins us from the Beit Shemesh game club; I had played with him on Tuesday night. Yaakov has played some games before, such as Magic and Settlers. He was a fine young gentleman, and I ope he comes again.

I was distracted during the first part of the evening with some phone calls and other issues.

R-Eco

Gili 30, Nadine 10, Yaakov 7

Nadine taught this to Yaakov while I was indisposed. It's interesting how wildly the scoring values in this game vary from play to play. In some games, a high score is below 10 and some of the players have negative values.

Carson City

Jon 38, Nadine 35, Yaakov 35, Gili 33, Eliezer 29

First plays for Yaakov and Eliezer. We play with the yellow roles, except for one of them. Also, the "gunslinger" role and the "gun chip" space provide only 2 guns as far as combat is concerned, but count as 3 guns for the reward spaces. We also still play with dice combat, which I hate; we'll try the other methods next time.

I'm happy to see that all the ending scores were relatively close together, though it looked like Nadine was fairly running away with the game. She drops a lot of points and cash early on, and then takes the sheriff and places it on the 5:1 scoring in round 4, hoping that she can simply keep her initial lead. On her last turn she simply placed 7 guys on the "take 4 coins" space.

Eliezer was almost at zero points going into the fourth round, so kudos for him for making it to 29 points.

I was pretty sure that Nadine was going to keep her lead at the end, though I knew that some of us would catch up. In the end, she was still ahead after we all traded in our cash, but she finally lost after the occupied board spaces were tallied. She only had 3 occupied board spaces, while we all had 5 to 7.

I started off losing a whole lot of combats, but I also won a few; it only felt like I lost more than I should have. I like the mechanism of giving you your guy back if you lose, which is a relatively decent compensation.

May 04, 2011

2011-05-05T20:42:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Zachary, Jessica, Gili, Aryeh, Binyamin, Nadine

Aryeh is a first-timer to the club. He has a little game experience.

Heroes of Graxia

Jessica 26, Zachary 21, Gili 21

I started this game but then left as it started to play with Aryeh. This was our first game actually finished, with most of the rules played correctly. However, we made the big mistake (at least until halfway through) of not discarding our hands and drawing a new one (ala Dominion). We were playing that you had to spend actions to draw cards. Of course, this changes the game dramatically.

I don't know what they did when they discovered this error. I know that Jessica had most of her legion decimated near the end of the game but still won the game.

Acquire

Binyamin 55,600, Jon 51,400, Aryeh 48,400

First play for Aryeh, and somewhere in the single digits for Binyamin. Aryeh was, without a doubt, the slowest player in our group, ever (yes, even slower then you, David). It was kind of a mystery, since he was obviously bright. He hesitated, asked a question about something minute, hesitated, asked another question about some minute aspect of strategy, hesitated, and then hesitated more. It seemed was very hard for him to make a decision, even when he had only one good option, but especially when he had nothing particularly good to do and simply had to place some random tile. The game took nearly three hours, of which 2.5 hours at least was Aryeh. I was growing restless, and I knew that Binyamin was going nuts.

He began to speed up a little near the end, but only marginally. And yet, other than his slowness, he was a nice guy and could be fun to play with. I think the trick is to find the right games for his personality type.

In our game, I managed to avoid the problem I had last game of only buying edge properties which took a long time to merge. I had spending cash all game. Binyamin and Aryeh were low on cash at least once each. But I still didn't win, mostly because I had fewer shares of the two big chains at the end. I made more money initially, but Binyamin managed a few quick foundings and mergers at the end.

Louis XIV

Jessica 48, Gili 43, Nadine 41, Zachary 32

Gili suggested this, I think. First plays for Jessica and Zachary. It took a long time, too, I think.

Boggle

Jessica, Gili, Nadine, Zachary

Played as a filler.

Mr. Jack

Binyamin+ (Detective), Jon (Criminal)

Binyamin caught Mr Jack on round 6, after a tipoff from the red guy. Also played as a filler.

Mu

Jon 63, Nadine 49, Jessica 6, Binyamin 0

I taught this to Binyamin and Jessica. I've figure out now to teach it starting backwards, from the score to the points, and then from the bid to the score. And then to the play. The reasons and strategy for bidding are still a complete mystery for the first 10 or 20 hands you play. But they began to warm up to it by the end of the two hands we played.

April 27, 2011

2011-04-29T16:51:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Tal, Jessica, Nadine

Very small game night. Starting to feel like the group may have trouble sticking to a weekly format.

Boggle

Jon, Nadine, Jessica, Tal

A few games waiting for others to show up. We didn't keep exact score, but Jessica probably won. Tal won one of the games, however.

Dominion

Jon 54, Nadine 46, Jessica 20

Kingdoms: Moat, Village, Woodcutter, Workshop, Bureaucrat, Feast, Militia, Remodel, Library, Mine

Jessica requested to try this again. The only action-granting card was Village, as you can see. Jessica didn't tune into this, kept getting to 4, and kept buying more useless cards (sometimes two if she had Workshop).

I played Village, Moat, Feast, and Remodel, trading Feasts for 2 Library's. These work well against Militia, especially when you also have a Village. I realized eventually that I also needed some Woodcutters for the 2 buys. Nadine also took Villages, as well as Militia and Mine. She bought the first two Provinces, but I caught up and then remodeled golds into more of them, buying Duchy's in the same turn.

Tigris and Euphrates

Jon 9/9/9/10, Nadine 7/7/9/10, Jessica 5/6/6/6

First play for Jessica. Nadine goes hell-bent and straight toward treasures, which makes for a quick game. She started on the bottom right while I started in The Garden. Jessica started in the middle and eventually got booted from the board by my encroachment on her terrain. I built some late monuments which remained remarkably uncontested for the three turns they were on the board.

Blokus Trigon

Jessica 4, Jon 10, Nadine 13

First play for Jessica, Nadine doesn't particularly like this game since it is spacial. Jessica liked it, however, and winning didn't hurt. I love the game, as well as the original. This one is definitely better with three. However, I'm still of two minds as to how to interpret "corner to corner" when it comes to the triangular pieces and hex vertices. We played with the most liberal interpretation, but I think a slightly stricter interpretation would make a more tense game.

April 20, 2011: Games Day

2011-04-21T12:27:00.003+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Lotem, Nadine, David 1, Ellis, Peleg, Zachary, Michael, Elijah, Abraham, David 2, Eitan, Emily, Adam, Vallah, Jessica, Diana, Max, Hila, Saarya, Noam, Aryeh, Ori, Yishai

I think that's everyone. I got to play several games I really like but don't get to play often enough with my usual regulars. It was a hopping, successful games day, with just enough chair and table space to go around, and only a little downtime for some people. Most everyone enjoyed their games, from what I heard.

There was one exception: one guy who appeared to be a lonely grandfatherly type showed up to play without the slightest idea as to why or what we play. He was, perhaps, the worst match for game playing since Dan Bosley's infamous Misadventures in Gaming series. He was loud and talked continuously in bad Hebrew (he was an English speaker, and we were all (mostly) English speakers as well). He thought he was very funny when he wasn't the slightest bit funny, ever. He kept accusing everyone, jokingly, of cheating, hiding cards, and being a shark. He wouldn't listen to single explanation of any rules - deliberately reading unrelated game material while you tried to talk - and complained every turn about not knowing what to do or what the game was about.

He was the first person I was going to personally throw out of my house for being impossible; thank goodness he chose that moment to leave. After four excruciating games.

Note that it's possible that I missed a game, somewhere.

Age of Empires III

Michael 84, Abraham 83, Gili 78, Elijah 74, Lotem 52

I almost started playing this game after teaching it to Lotem, Elijah, and Abraham, but them Michael walked in and wouldn't have had a game partner. I knew Michael would like the game, so I told him to take my place and then gave him the quick run down as the first turn got underway.

At the end of the game, as they were packing up, Michael was down 14 points. he then asked if he was supposed to score these face down tiles in front of him that he had forgotten about. So it turned out that he won by a point.

Antike

Jon 8, David1, Ellis, Peleg

The last excruciating game played with the above described non-gamer. Ellis and Peleg appeared to enjoy the game. I started off as the Phoenicians, and, while Peleg and Ellis fought in northern Europe, I took a commanding and embarrassing lead.

Citadels

Emily 32, Eitan 31

They played together when they first arrived and were waiting for other people to free up. They like this game, which I don't because of the Assassin.

They also took Gosu off of my hands, another game that only they liked (not that no one else liked it, it's just that we didn't like it).

Cosmic Encounter

Adam, David2, Elijah, Zachary, Vallah

I heard a lot of laughing going on in this game. The ending appears to have come down to a major kingmaking situation.

Dominion

In all of these games, only the base set was used.

Nadine 42, Ellis 36, Peleg 27, David1 23

Nadine says that this is the first time ~~she's really gotten the game. She was cycling~~ she cycled through her entire deck several times as the game played.

Abraham, Nadine, Peleg, Ellis

They ended the game early, though it appears that Abraham had tuned his deck and was on his way to winning.

Jon 33, Max 29, Elijah 24, Jessica 10

We played with the same set that was abandoned by the previous players: Cellar, Chapel, Bureaucrat, Militia, Moneylender, Smithy, Spy, Thief, Throne Room, Library.

Note the lack of a 3 point card, the lack of anything useful in 5 point cards, the great amount of 4 point cards, and the great amount of attack cards with no defense. And note that many of the cards trash cards from your own or others' hands, or force you to discard cards.

The result was a game where decks were shrinking nearly as fast as they were growing and we were constantly mixing. Max was already starting to feel a little burnt out on Dominion, and this was a particularly annoying set.

I had dumped all of my coppers and Estates and had just enough cash to buy provinces, but lived in constant fear that a thief would take away my purchasing power. I was very lucky; the thieves either got my little money, or no money at all, or I always bought a new Gold right after they trashed one of mine anyway. Still, I thought Max might be winning.

Elijah was the only one who bothered to take a Throne Room, and therefore was able to chain double actions. It didn't seem to help him much, as he usually ended up with only 4 purchasing power after his chains, anyway.

El Grande

Abraham/Elijah 95, Michael 94, Nadine 92, Emily 85, Eitan 64

Abraham starts this, but then switched to Steam because a) he wanted to play Steam and b) Elijah didn't and would have been sitting around waiting for a game otherwise.

After the first third, Abraham was in the lead by around 8 points. By the second scoring, the lead had narrowed to 1 point ahead of Nadine, the usual favorite to win.

Genoa

Gili 785, Eitan 700, Noam 690, Emily 550

Noam was rumored to be winning the game at around the half-point. This was the last game to finish the day.

Heroes of Graxia

Jon, Zachary

I wanted to try this game out for its first play, and I thought that Zachary would like it, since he's more of an American-style gamer than a Euro-gamer (he likes some direct competition in his games). Yes, he did very much like the game. I liked it, too, though perhaps a bit less.

Unfortunately, we decided to stop the game around mid-way because we had messed up so many rules that the game balance was entirely off at that point. For instance, we mistook the price of the cards at one point, letting Zachary buy ten or so cards
at nearly nothing when they should have been 3 or 4 times as expensive (we mistook the toss-out value for the card cost). We forgot the defense value in our first two attacks, thus suffering about twice as many wounds as we should have. And so on.

First game is a learning experience, as I always say. I think I'm ready to teach the game for the next try.

So what do I think? Unlike Dominion, every card is available each game, but only certain cards are available to a player on his turn; you may buy a mediocre card only to reveal a better card which your opponent can now buy. So that's bad. But, otherwise, the game looks pretty solid and enjoyable. Certainly for my opponent, who was looking forward to something with a little PvP. It's VERY hard to figure out the right buying approach on your first play.

Homesteaders

Jessica 54, Jon 48, Ellis 41, Peleg 37

First play for everyone except me. I said a number of times, apparently, how much I like the game. I though I was doing pretty well, but I had had to accumulate 6 debt chips to do it. I was hoping to cancel most of them by the game end, but I was still left with 4. that was enough to sink me from winning.

The other three players all had piles of 4 or more trade goods (gold, copper, or cows) at the end of the game. I'm not sure exactly how Jess managed to pull off a victory; actually, I thought Peleg was doing better.

It's Alive

Adam, Vallah, David2

Vallah noted to me later that she didn't particularly like the game (I'm not sure if she knew that I was he designer).

Saarya, Noam, Aryeh

Zachary 49, Elijah 43, Jon 33

First play for Zachary. This was a quickly played game. I failed miserably, as you can see.

Key Harvest

Zachary 25+, Eitan 25-, Emily 22, Nadine 19

I've never played this, and I didn't see how it went.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam, Vallah

Played when they first came and were waiting for others to free up.

Notre Dame

Nadine 73, Ellis 50, Zachary 43, Peleg 27, David1 26

Nadine administered a beatdown, I see. First plays for everyone else.

Odds and Evens

Michael 3, Elijah 1

Michael insisted that I record this one, so that it be known that he won something.

R-Eco

Nadine 11, Peleg 7, Ellis -1, David1 -5

First play for all except Nadine.

Rock Paper Scissors

Michael 3, Jon 2

See Odds and Evens.

Settlers of Catan

Gili 10, Jessica 6, Diana/Max 4

Diana started playing this as her first game, but she got bored of it. Max took over for her when he arrived.

Steam

Abraham 46, Jon 45, Ellis 43, Peleg 14

First plays for everyone except me. A tough fought game. Any one of the three leaders could have swung the game by transitioning from income to points one move earlier or later.

Peleg spectacularly failed to get his engine moving and spent too much time building his first links.

Tigris and Euphrates

Eitan 4/4/4/10, Nadine 4/4/4/4, Emily 3/4/5/7, Gili 3/4/5/5

Looks to have been a close game.

Tobago

Jon 44, Abraham 36, Lotem 29, Gili 18

One of the first games played, first play for everyone except me. Once again we played without the curses. I took this idea from Binyamin, and I think I will play this way from now on. The amulets are still very useful for chaining actions and for removing cubes.

Torres

Yishai+, Saarya, Aryeh, Oren

First play for everyone except for Saarya, and he hadn't played this in a very long time. Actually, no one in the game group has played this for quite a long time, which is a shame.

The cards were in German, but I only had to field one question during the game, so the symbology was basically good enough after my explanation.

Tribune

Max+, Elijah, Jessica, Hila

They played the four player medium game where 30 Denari is one of the four required conditions. First play for everyone except Elijah.

April 13, 2011

2011-04-14T15:49:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Jessica, Nadine, Binyamin, Tzvi Yehuda, Zachary

Zachary and Jessica both returned for a second visit. Binyamin brought T"Y to game night because they won't be able to make it to Games Day next week.

7 Wonders

Binyamin 59, Jessica 53, Jon 50, T"Y 50, Zachary 49, Nadine 40

First play for all of us except for Binyamin and T"Y. Of course I'd heard about this game on BGG, but I never really took a closer look, assuming it was some kind of long civilization building game. It was entirely unlike what I was expecting.

The game is simply a card game, a cross between Fairy Tale and Race for the Galaxy. The game comes with huge over-produced but beautiful boards and bits in a large box; but it's just a card game; the boards and bits are essentially superfluous.

Each player gets 7 cards. Pick one to play and pass the rest to your neighbor. Repeat until you've each played 6 cards. Repeat 3 times (a total of 18 cards). That's it.

The cards can "produce" resources, give you military power, give you victory points, add to sets (that also give victory points), or have some other minor effect (give you cash, reduce the cash you need to play something). Many of the cards also allow you to play future cards for free, i.e. if you have card A in play, you can play card B without requiring its resource cost.

In addition to the above, you can also toss a card out for 3 money, or place it face down to activate one of the three stages of your city, each of which requires some resources and gives you a similar benefit to playing certain cards.

Resource "payments" is not actually a payment; you just need to have it in play. A resource never gets used up. If you lack the resources you need to play a card, but one of your neighbors' has that resource, you can pay two cash to that neighbor and utilize his or hers.

That's it, really. What's good about it is that you have to pass away all those cards you want while deciding which one to play; as the game progresses, you might want to not pass a card that will give your neighbor too many points. You also have many areas in which to concentrate: the brown cards, the grey cards, the blue cards, building your city, the green sets, etc. Naturally, you won't get the cards you need to focus perfectly.

Like certain other games, if you are focusing on a strategy that others are ignoring, you are in much better shape than if you are competing for the same card types.

What's bad about the game is a) it's really light. That's not much of a problem, but you might have been expecting something more substantial. And b) the tableau and its effects become crowded and difficult to review as the game goes on. You may have 12 cards that you can play for free now; each time you get new cards, you have to review all the cards you have in play and check the names of all the cards you were passed. Then you have to do the same for each of your neighbors. This can be time consuming, so, in my first game, I didn't do much peeping into my neighbors' fields. But you really have to in order to do well.

It's really, really Eurogamey: the theme might as well be vegetable gardens as ancient wonders. In any case, I didn't notice the theme while I was playing, despite the nice artwork. And there's hardly a whiff of confrontation. You get certain extra points if you have more military strength than your neighbors at the end of each round, but they only lose one point for it if you do. The rest is simply denying them the cards they need.

We enjoyed it and would play again to explore it more. Nadine in particular liked it and found it easy to pick up and understand, compared to some other recent games. Nadine concentrated on blue cards but didn't succeed, as you can see. I tried for early brown resources and then green sets, with some late military might (late military might is worth a lot more than early might is). I don't really know what Binyamin did to win.

Age of Empires III

Binyamin 142, Zachary 110ish, T"Y 80ish

Zachary requested this, and it was his first play. I think he enjoyed it, but I don't know anything about how the game went.

Puerto Rico

Nadine 49, Jessica 47, Jon 46

First play for Jessica, who is probably the brightest non-gamer to join our group. She professes to be confuses initially, but she picks up games very quickly. I helped her through the first few rounds, but she was already making confident and reasonable choices by mid-game.

Nadine was first player and achieved a tobacco monopoly, though she never got any corn. She took a mid-game Harbor in place of a Factory. I was second and took an early sugar, a coffee to play in front of Jessica, and a Factory. I only got a trade good at the end of mid-game; enough to buy two big buildings, but not quite enough to buy anything else. Jessica had the first trade good, a coffee, and Guild Hall, filling out the entire building.

Havoc: The Hundred Years War

Binyamin 29, Nadine 28, T"Y 26, Jessica 18, Jon 16

First play for Jessica. As you can see, I lost every game I played this evening. I suggested this game because it was a light game for five, and we hadn't played it in quite some time.

Still a fun game, though we still can't figure out the rules for how dogs work. I think I understood it once, but I lost it again.

With five players, I wasn't able to get anything approaching a straight flush, but I had a mid-range of three and four of a kinds. I took some mid-game wins and second places, but the rest of my attacks, including Agincourt, I was defeated and wasted my resources entirely. Binyamin was behind at mid-game, and he only came in first in the seventh battle, but he squeaked out a win with that.

April 6, 2011

2011-04-07T13:49:00.001+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Jessica, Gili, Mace, Matias

Jessica lives close by in Jerusalem. I was recently introduced to her, and she had never heard of these new games. She dropped by to give them a try and enjoyed herself. She promises to return. Matias lives in Argentina and comes to Israel on business every year; this is the first time he checked out the game scene. He is an experienced player and also plans to return (the next time he is back in Israel).

Boggle

Jon, Jessica, Nadine, Gili

Nadine, Jessica, and I started off with this while waiting for Gili and Mace. We were all on the same level, give or take, which is a new and positive experience for me (I typically win). We played 4 letter minimum. Gili joined us for a second and third game; being a native Israeli, she plays a three letter minimum. We all tied in the second game, but due to the three Americans cancelling out nearly all of each others' words, Gili won the last game by a reasonable margin.

Tribune

Gili+, Jon, Nadine, Mace, Jessica

First play for Jessica. The trick was to find a game for five that is a good intro game for a brand new player but also not too long or too boring. I usually start new players with Settlers, but I don't have the 5-6 player expansion (I don't really like it). I suggested Power Grid, but some of the others thought it would be too long.

Tribune is a little overwhelming at first, but Jessica picked it up quickly enough. For some reason, the rule "you must play either more cards OR cards with a higher value" seems to be very difficult for some players to wrap their head around; Nadine and others corroborate this, though I never understood why. I typically get more confused when two areas of the board have similar but contradictory requirements.

On the first round, Mace mistook the light blue faction for a dark blue. As a result, he had a hand full of dark blue cards and tried to take over the light blue faction. That set him back a bit. There were a few other, lesser, mistakes of that sort. While we were playing, Matias arrived. he spent the second half of the game watching and acting as rules arbiter.

Nadine got to three out of the four required victory conditions by the second round, and looked poised to win by the end of round three. However, she lost the temporary favor of the gods, and stalled the rest of the game. I got to three win conditions in round four, with the same results. I secured the fourth condition in round five and only needed to convert my temporary favor to a permanent one. Although I peeked at the card color I needed on the board, every single card of that color was taken by other players (purely by coincidence), I didn't have any in my hand, and I couldn't pick one randomly from the stack of five.

Gili proceeded to win the game at the end of the round.

Settlers of Catan

Jessica 10, Jon 7, Matias 8

First play for Jessica. I shunted Nadine and Mace off to play Dominion so that I could hook Jessica onto the gateway game. As often happens with Settlers, the new player won, which only adds to the hook element. I think she greatly enjoyed the game.

However, I must note that once during the game, while waiting for certain resources, she said, "There's an element of Go Fish in here." Probably the most insulting comparison since Gilad said that Cosmic Encounter reminded him strongly of Munchkin.

At the beginning of the game, I warned her of my SoC maxim: when two people fight over the Longest Road, the third player usually wins. Matias started off strongly, getting to five points while Jessica and I were at 3. We both made it to 4 while he jumped to 7 by gaining the Longest Road. Matias then stalled out.

Jessica stole his Longest Road and I encouraged them both to spend the rest of the game fighting over it (humorously, of course, given my opening strategic advice). I made it to 7 points on the board with my third soldier ready to play; Matias made it to 8 points on the board, ready to steal back Longest Road. But Jessica managed to end the game with a settlement.

Dominion/Prosperity

Mace 67, Nadine 53

Mace and Nadine played with mostly Prosperity cards, which is one of the expansions that Mace doesn't own and that Nadine is less familiar with. The first game appears to have gone typically enough.

Mace 156, Nadine 75

But wow for the second game. Mace took every Colony and tons of additional points by continuously triple playing a card that gave him points every time he bought a card; he kept buying coppers. Somehow that didn't slow down his hand, though I don't know why, exactly.

156 is certainly a high score for our group. Around the interwebs, some people have reported scores of 240 or so, and one even claimed a score in the 400s.

R-Eco

Jon 16, Jessica 3, Matias 2

First play for both Matias and Jessica. I played with my usual random point stacks (mixed colors and order) rather than the prescribed color and order stacking.

Matias loved the game and hopes to bring it back to his group. He pulled some early points, but he dumped again and again and again, until he had a deck of illegal dumps; 16 points worth, I think. Jessica and I dumped lightly, but I pulled in far more chips than she did.

March 30, 2011

2011-03-31T12:47:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin

Light game night, long game.

R-Eco

Nadine 24, Jon 5, Gili 5

Or thereabouts. Nadine just killed us. I ended with 15 positive points, but I had had to dump 10 cards. Gili hadn't dumped at all. Nadine had dumped 3 cards.

Shipyard

Binyamin 124, Jon 98, Gili 98, Nadine 94

First play for Binyamin. Both he and Nadine took fairly long turns, especially at the beginning. Binyamin was particularly concerned with squeezing every last drop out of all six of his mission cards; can't say it wasn't worthwhile for him. However, the game took 3.5 hours (including explanation, which wasn't all that long).

Binyamin really likes this type of fiddly game. I like some fiddly games, and I like this one, when it doesn't take too long. The key factor in a fiddly game that makes it fun is if there is always something worthwhile to do. If the fiddliness is accompanied by a sense of helplessness and frustration for lack of progress, it can be dull. Also, if the fiddliness is simply imposed to make what should be straightforward into something complex and obscure, just to make it complex and obscure, it can be grating. The latter is how Nadine feels about the game.

I compare the game to Le Havre, but Binyamin liked it better then Le Havre and better even than Agricola.

I pulled nearly entirely useless blue missions; just useful enough to make me waste my time trying to eke 8 points out of them, when I would have been better off concentrating on nearly anything else. My green missions - number of ships, number of ship tiles, number of 5 tile ships - gave me 50 points, which was about average for everyone, except Binyamin who managed to get 72 points out of his missions. I built my fourth 5 tile ship on the last turn; it was only worth 2 points on its own, but boosted my missions nicely.

To play the game correctly, you really need to count your actions, which I'm generally doing around the time that I have 8 actions left.

March 23, 2011

2011-03-24T14:16:00.001+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Zachary, Gili, David K

Zachary is a newcomer. His experience included HeroClix, Blood Bowl, and other American type games, as well as come Settlers. I think I didn't give him a great impression, as I whined a little more than I typically do over both games he played, even though I wasn't doing badly in either. Hopefully this won't dissuade him from returning.

Dominion

Jon 33, Nadine 28, Gili 22, Zachary 22

Kingdoms: Chapel, Moat, Village, Bureaucrat, Feast, Moneylender, Smithy, Council Room, Laboratory, Envoy.

First play for Zachary. I used the chapel to destroy every copper and estate in my hand, carefully replacing them with silvers and a gold, and a village, laboratory, and finally a smithy. I thought I was doing well, and I was.

However, Nadine, who simply bought silvers and golds and an initial bureaucrat, still managed to draw two provinces before I could get my first, and then a third after I got my second. And with two other players also drawing provinces, the game looked like it would end before I caught up to her.

I miscounted and thought that she was one point ahead of me when the game ended. Actually, she only ended with 3 provinces, 2 duchys, and 4 estates. I had 5 provinces and a duchy.

Princes of Florence

Zachary 56, Jon 53+, David 53, Nadine 53, Gili 46

First play for Zachary. The rest of us hadn't played in a long time, which is why I suggested it. Five is a tough game. I make the following changes for five players: people pick only 1 out of 2 when buying a profession, and the last profession cannot be bought, but can be recruited.

Nadine's theory is to buy nothing at an auction for more than 200. Which would not be so bad, except that she somehow picked up two prestige cards and a recruiter for that price. I bought an early forest and then paid higher prices for my goods: 1100 for my first jester, 700 and 500 for recruiters, I got another jester later for cheap.

Gili bought two early builders; she also had a prestige card for the least spaces on her board, but Zachary also had two builders and out-built her.

Mu

David 209, Nadine, Jon, Gili

We played four hands of this, and David just missed beating all of our scores combined. Again, I suggested we play this because Nadine didn't really want to play Race for the Galaxy and Gili didn't really want to play Tichu.

Although I first reviewed the game as highly uncontrolled and random, and although I still feel that way about the play to some extent, I now think that there's a lot of room for exploring strategies in bidding and play. Each player concerned about his own score, and not just the partnership's, adds some intrigue. However, not having a dummy removes most, but not all, of the play strategy; still, there's some possibility for the occasional finesse or end-play.

I think I need to play this a dozen more times to get a better handle on it.

March 16, 2011

2011-03-17T20:11:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, David K, Binyamin

Quiet night with lots of play.

Boggle

Jon, Nadine, Gili

We played three games while waiting for others to arrive. I played only five letter words, but I also noted four letter words, mostly so I could cancel them out against Nadine. Nadine played four letter words, while Gili, a native Hebrew speaker, played three letter (and the occasional two letter) words. No one really kept score, anyway.

Glory to Rome

Binyamin+, Jon, Gili, David K, Nadine

First play for David. We played that you could not have more than four buildings in progress at any one time. While we were wary about how Forum would play, since we thought we knew a few ways to counter it, we decided to give it one more try. Binyamin ended the game with a Forum victory; I was a few moments away from ending the game with Catacombs. If I had done so, I would have won, followed closely by Gili.

Binyamin thinks, and I agree, that the trouble with Forum is not that it's unbalanced, which it isn't. It's that it makes the game less fun. It's just not a fun experience to do well and play well, working toward something, and then not have the game even judged on that criteria. It would be different if Forum's exceptional win criteria weren't so easy to fulfill. I generally don't like mechanics that end a game at someone's will; this is much worse. I think that we're going to have to change Forum to something like "end the game and gain +3 points" or something.

Magic: The Gathering

Jon++, David

It's a rare day when I beat David at Magic. I felt like I drafted all over the place, but I ended up with WG with a U splash. David played BG. One of David's black cards was Eastern Paladin (tap to kill a G creature), and most of my good creatures were G, which is why I diversified to W and U. Lucky for me, David never pulled out his paladin.

In the first game, David thunmped me down to 7, but I brought out blockers, and then a flyer and a pinger. The latter two worked him down for a while. He tried to kill one of my good creatures, but I was saved by a card I had never used before and wasn't entirely sure how to use: Standard Bearer, which I had innocently thrown on a Bears early on.

In the second game, I brought out an early Bears followed by a +3/+3 enchantment, and he resigned three rounds later.

Tribune

Binyamin+, Nadine, Gili

All I know is that Binyamin won and the game went fairly quickly.

Bridge

Jon/David, Binyamin/Nadine

We played a few hands. David and Nadine don't play often, but we still had fun.

March 09, 2011

2011-03-11T10:51:00.000+02:00

Participants: Mace, Gili, Jon

Game night at Mace's house, since mine was being painted and Nadine had other plans. I bought two games, and those are the games that we played. Once again, I didn't take notes.

Glory to Rome

Jon 21, Mace, Gili

The game took only an hour. Three players, so less sites, and this was our second play. Mace was hoping to do another Forum victory, but the rapid decline of sites, the lack of any supporting cards to quickly add to his Clients, and my stealing his Forum card scuttled that plan.

I saw the dwindling site supply and so I did an early Vault which was very lucrative for me; we didn't use Vault in the last game and so the other two weren't planning for it, I think. After I did mine, however, they started to catch up with Vault, so I ended the game by building the last four sites.

Shipyard

Jon 110ish, Mace 105ish, Gili 90ish

First play for Mace, second for Gili and me. I explained the game better this time, and Mace appeared to be up to speed already at the beginning of the game.

Once again, the game reminded me strongly of Le Havre, with all of its little bits overflowing the board, the constant trading of this for that, and the essential feeling of "you versus the board" rather than "you versus the other players". An Ameritrasher's nightmare. While the game has you intensely focused, it - as do other games that are Ameritasher's nightmares - seems to lack a little something in the way of soul. Too many cards, numbers, and bits to match, not enough "play".

I's still happy to play it, but I feel like I could read a magazine while doing so, which is the same way I feel about Caylus (actually, I liked Caylus less).

I produced a number of ships to match my required missions, but I needed propellers, and a) barely any of the ships had propellers and b) Mace and Gili took the workers who lets you add an extra propeller to any ship. Without that worker, and without ships that let you add propellers, you're pretty much sunk as far as producing ships with much value: they'll have little speed and little points for their trial run. At the end of the game, I looked at the remaining sterns and saw that 8 out of 10 had propeller space. I won anyway because I took the two ships that had the propeller space, and because I focused on my other missions.

Mace also did well with his missions, but poorly with his ships. Gili had a 29 point ship, but that was one of only two ships that she launched. After the first two laps, I planned out the rest of my turns; Mace tried to do the same, but Gili stole the one action he needed on the last round, preventing him from taking a smokestack and at least 10 extra points for his ship.

March 02, 2011

2011-03-04T14:20:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, Mace, Binyamin

Once again I'm doing this without notes. Bleah.

Fairy Tale

Gili 51, Jon 45, Nadine 36

Scores approximate. I tried a combination strategy only to discover on the first round that Gili, sitting in front of me in the passing order, was using the same strategy. I'm always scared to try the once that need specific cards from a smaller pool (such as 4, or even 1), because, with three players, it just seems unlikely that those cards are actually going to turn up. So I passed them all, and of course they did show up; luckily, no one else tried for them, either.

The baseline seems to be 3 points a card. So when you can score more, you should do it. The 6/1 cards (flip, unflip) are marginally better than 3 points a card, and even better when you have ones to flip down when you must. The game is actually kind of interesting. I think I need to play it more often.

Glory to Rome

Mace +, Jon, Binyamin, Nadine, Gili

First play for all of us, and we all liked the game. However, like Tigris and Euphrates, some of the basic mechanics, while seemingly simple for some of us, caused a lot of confusion again and again for others. I'm not sure why that happens, but sometimes a particular rule is just hard for an otherwise smart person to wrap his or her head around. I think I can teach the game better next time.

GtR looks like shlock, and the "box" that the game comes in is less then shlock. But the game is really good, deep, and satisfying. The game is just a card game, but each card has five different uses: a)cas a role; b) as an extra action for a role whenever anyone plays the role; c) as a resource for building a building; d) as a building that gives you a bonus power when it is completed; or e) simply to tuck away for vp's at the end of the game. once you get the hang of it, the cards make sense; however, they initially are very confusing, as the bonus power is foremost on the card and it isn't active unless the card is played as a building and the building completed.

On your turn you play a card as a role (a), and anyone else with the same role card can play it to also do the role (or can pick a card or cards, instead). So, like Puerto Rico, you benefit everyone else by what you choose to do, hopefully benefiting yourself more through the timing or the available resources to select first. On everyone else's turn, you can play the same role card as they played or pick cards; in addition, everyone, the player whose turn it is and any other player, gets to play the role additional times for each "patron" they have previously played (b).

The roles allow you to take patrons (b), take resources (c), play buildings (d) or add resources or cards to buildings (c/d), steal other players' resources (c), or convert resources to victory points (c/e). You pretty much have to complete at least one decent building during the game, because, in addition to the points and special power you get from the building, your capacity for patrons and victory point cards increases according to the building's points.

Owing to the building powers, the game is wild and fun, with your strategy determined by the cards you have at any one time. But you can always choose to draw back up to a full hand (so you can dump or play cards pretty freely), and there are always a lot of options.

The one negative ... which I'm not sure is a negative ... is that a few buildings can end the game with instant victory for a player, or simply end the game early. I'm not a big fan of that mechanic. I understand that this allows even a "losing" player the chance to win the game, but it makes all the other game play that occurred feel like a waste. In our game, mace won by completing a Forum, and the game ended like that. There are a number of possible responses to this move, but you MUST take them and prepare for them, which disrupts the game flow severely. On the other hand, this was our first game, so the idea of the "game flow" that I got from playing it once may have been illusory. We'll see.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

Jon, Nadine, Binyamin, Mace

I taught this to Binyamin and Mace and refreshed all of our memories at the same time. It took a long time to explain, and a long time to get through the first two rounds, at which point Binyamin had to call it quits. The game suffered in comparison to Glory to Rome which we had played just before; it's actually a decent game, but not nearly as exciting.

February 23, 2011

2011-02-24T18:22:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Mace, Gili, Tal

Quiet game night.

Nile

Mace 1/2/2/x, Gili 1/1/2/x, Nadine, Jon

Mace selected this again, determined to win at least once. The last time I played, I thought that the game might grow on me some more if I played it more. Nope.

On the contrary. I have now fully formed my opinion that the game is unenjoyable. The main mechanic is to hope that a field that you have planted will flip up before it is ruined by someone else or by a plague. The second is to hope that you draw cards that don't duplicate what you've already scored or what is flipped up, and that exceed what others have in play. All of this hoping is not only boring, it is also skewed. The game is too short (even when played several times through the deck) and the times your field is picked too infrequent, unless you're amazingly lucky.

It's slightly better with two players.

Genoa

Mace 705, Jon 625, Gili 565, Nadine 505

First play for Mace, second for Nadine. I played the version called Traders of Genoa a few times. Back when I did, I thought the game was grossly long, and we had shortened the game by two turns ... and had still been too long. I suggested that for this game we also shorten the game by two turns. Gili suggested a compromise of shortening the game by one turn.

In what is probably a first for our game group, we actually sailed through the first rounds at a relatively good speed. After three rounds, I suggested that we re-add the turn that we had removed, and so we did. The game took us only a little over 2.5 hours.

I concentrated on two early Large deliveries, which I thought did me some good; they did. But it prevented my concentrating at all on the end game scroll collecting. Mace meanwhile started collecting these, and while he didn't have much cash in hand, he ended with a fist full of them.

When calculating whether or not to trade these cards to him, I valued them at only up to 50 (for him, but only 10 for me). Turns out that I had undervalued them; when he was able to join two groups of three into a group of seven, he ended up with far more than a 50 point gain.

Nadine is not much of a negotiator: she often wants to ignore that part of the game, or she sticks steadfastly to a negotiating position which is not all based on actual value. Still, she played gamely and I think enjoyed herself. Gili was the one who brought the game, and she had played some (rather long) games with her friends already.

Tichu

Mace/Nadine 1000+, Jon/Tal ---

Tal joined me for a game of Tichu; we had to remind Mace how the game was played, and how the special cards worked. Mace bid and made a Grand Tichu on the second hand (though Tal missed a chance to prevent him from making it). I bid Tichu only once, and lost. I also misplayed a different hand. The result was rather pathetic.

Feb 16, 2011

2011-02-18T10:54:00.001+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Mace, David K, Avi K

David returned after a long absence, and brought his son Avi.

Nile

Mace, Gili, Nadine, Jon/Avi

Mace wanted to play this for the filler game. He started off quite well. I gave up my position to Avi when he came, because he likes the game more than I do, though I think the game may grow on me if I play it several more times. I don't know what the results were, if any.

Carson City

David 60something, Mace 40something, Avi

First plays for David and Avi, Mace taught them. I don't know much else about the game, but I think they all enjoyed it.

Shipyard

Gili 110something, Nadine 90something, Jon 80something

This is what happens when I don't write scores down. First play for all of us, we learned some of the rules and all of the strategy as we played.

At first the game seemed interminably long and complex, as Euros tend to do. Just setting up the game took an hour; and, like Le Havre, the game pieces are not easily stacked on the board and tend to make a complete mess, unless you invest in some kind of cup holder system for the parts.

"Like Le Havre" is also the feel we had for the great number of pieces and turn methodology in the game. Unfortunately, Le Havre is just on the other side of the border that Agricola just manages to just stay within: a great sprawling complex game which is fun, but only if all the players are experienced and able to take their turns in a timely manner. And yet difficult to get that experience and hard to take one's turns in a timely manner.

The game is a series of rondels and queues, around eight of them. The main one is the action rondel. On your turn, you move the action marker that you used last time to the front of the queue and then you take any available free action, except the one you used last time. If you take an action not used often (i.e. further back in the queue) you get some money, though not much.

The actions are either a) move a marker around one of the rondels and take one of the items now marked (or pay to move the marker more spaces), or b) take one of the items in one of the queues (for free if at the front of the queue, or pay a little extra for items later in the queue).

When you complete a "ship", you gain points for various items on your ship and how well those items match other items on your waterways. At the end of the game, you gain points for items you have acquired during the game in from hidden missions, most of which must be on ships that you've completed.

There. That's probably the quickest explanation ever for this complex a game.

Nadine, as usual, found it dry at the beginning; she tends to judge games harshly if the tactics and strategy are not more accessible, espeically if they have a lot of pieces. I think she began to soften a bit as the game came to a close, mostly because she beat me. Gili managed a triumphant first ship of 24 points, and then some great end scoring to boot.

I look forward to playing again, but I'm not sure how often it will make it to the table.

February 09, 2011

2011-02-10T21:27:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Mace, Gili

Quiet game night.

Dominion/Seaside/Prosperity

Nadine 38, Gili 20, Mace 19, Jon 15

Kingdoms: Workshop, Smithy, Council Room, Embargo, Ambassador, Navigator, Vault, Grand Market, King's Court, Peddler. No other Prosperity cards.

Kingdoms costing from 2 to 8. No bonus actions before 6 cost, and no double actions except for King's Court. This was our first play for certain Seaside and Prosperity cards. Nadine didn't understand Ambassador's value; while it seemed to work for both me and Mace, Nadine's ultimate victory may be a counter-argument. She ended with 5 provinces and 8 estates.

I passed up the opportunity to buy provinces twice, which was a mistake. Everyone had 8 or more purchasing power quite early, so the game went too few rounds. King's Court was used three times, and always on Council Room.

Agricola

Jon 53, Mace 40, Nadine 38, Gili 25

The game went for 2:50, which I think was probably pretty quick for us. This time I had a kind of feeling that I was doing well, even though I hadn't accumulated any points by round 8 or 9.

Nadine's major mission in Agricola is to be the first to expand her family, and that's what she did. Mace followed, and I came next. However, the two rounds I was waiting to expand gave me time to add a fourth room onto my house. Thus, after Gili expanded, I expanded again.

Nadine had an early fireplace (her other top priority) and a pasture with several cattle. Mace had what looked like over 20 grain by mid-to-end game. Gili had 5 empty field spaces and only three family members at game end. I also had 12 points in bonus cards.

February 02, 2011

2011-02-06T11:21:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Mace

Game night started at 8, since I had to drop some people (including Nadine) at a wedding, which I couldn't stay at. I said some hellos, and then returned.

Steam

Jon 70ish, Mace 55ish, Gili 52ish.

First play for Mace, second for Gili. I didn't write the scores down. I was allowed to choose any game I wanted, and Gili was willing to play this again, though she had done very poorly last time. This time she did much better (though she still lost).

We had very little intersection, and only once or twice made any deliveries on someone else's track. So the one negative factor of Steam, which is kingmaking, didn't come into play. Also, three players gives you a great selection of available roles to choose from; it's much more painful with 4 or 5 players.

In our game, I stated on the East Cost and expanded straight west. Gili started on the "south" and expanded straight north. Mace started in the "southwest" expanded north. I managed to keep a higher income and also build more links. That kept me ahead for most of the game. Gili and Mace were neck and neck for most of the game, with Gili ahead in point, but Mace ahead in links.

January 26, 2011

2011-01-27T15:04:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Alex, Gili, Binyamin, Shalom, Nadine, Mace

Alex is a game designer who dropped by to show us his designs, get feedback, and make some connections. Shalom came for his first time, even though he's an experienced gamer who lives in the area. Welcome to both of you.

Alex's designs range from the puzzle-like - think Rush Hour, though they are more imaginative - to the simple abstract. One of his designs was something like Go-Moku meets Abalone. Each player places a marble on the board such that it touches at least one of the other marbles and then pushes it and any other marbles in the line one space. The first to get four in a row wins. The game is for 2-4 players. We were unsure if the game was solvable for two, or a forced draw for experienced players, though we suspected it would be. Still, it's better than Abalone.

Tobago

Shalom+, Nadine, Gili

Nadine won this last time, but I didn't think it was her type of game. She thinks it's entirely tactical. First play for Shalom and he won by about 10 points.

Bridgetown Races

Binyamin 6, Mace 6, Jon 5, Alex 5

First play for all of us. Carey, the designer, sent me a copy, since I had played a prototype at BGG.con 5 years ago and had liked it. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 8 different colored flags. To do this, you simply have to cross 8 different bridges containing 8 different flags using the mode of transportation that corresponds to that flag. The flags are put out randomly and the ones you need may not be available at the bridge that you need them to be.

The components are nice, but they're a little unwieldy. You place a flag that you're won on a little board on the name of the bridge, indicating that you won that flag on that bridge. However, the flags easily fell over at the slightest jostling, so we kept having to remember how they had been arranged.

As for the game, it seems to be pretty easy to get to around 5 or 6 flags, and then it's nearly impossible to get any further. if you have 6 differently colored flags on six different bridges, you need exactly the other two flags on exactly the other two bridges to win. The odds of this occurring during the random placement of the flags at the beginning of the round on the last round or two are nearly zero.

You have two possibilities to remedy this. First, one person, once during a round, can swap two flags on the bridges. Since only one person can do this, and every one else is out to make his life miserable at that point, it is unlikely to do anyone much good. Second, you can pick up a different color flag on a bridge that you already have, discarding the one that is there, and hopefully allowing you to then pick up the discarded colored flag on a bridge that you don't already have. There is a slightly more than non-zero chance that this can be done, but it's tough.

As a result, in the last one or two rounds, if you already have your five or six flags, you're unlikely to be able to do much other than prevent the other players from getting what they want. Mind you, this is from a single play experience with four players. It's possible that this is not the case with less players.

As a result, and due to not having a sensible tiebreaker rule, though I had fun counting the steps and choosing my actions, the game didn't have an interesting conclusion. I found out later that Carey has posted an interesting tiebreaker rule on BGG: it makes certain flags more valuable than other flags, which could give you something more interesting to do at the end. I would go further and simply give each flag a point value; you win instantly if you collect 8 differently colored flags, as usual, otherwise you score your flags and the highest score wins.

I intend to try again with some of the other group members.

Carson City

Binyamin 57, Mace 51, Jon 35, Nadine 31

First play for Mace. I'm guessing the last two scores.

We had played CC with 3 players, and were hoping to try with 5, but Shalom had to leave early. Still, 4 players was a world removed from 3; a lot more competition and fighting. 5 is going to be a bloodbath.

We all still like the game, but the gun supremacy, if established early by one player as Binyamin did, is too strong, even when we reduce the gun role and gun chip to "2 guns for fighting purposes, 3 for income or point calculation purposes". Still, if more than one player tries this strategy at the same time, it may balance out.

I had no ranches and one mine, but I had some good saloons (which Binyamin robbed twice). Mace had 4 ranches and associated buildings to tap them. Binyamin had only 12 (down to 6) incomes from buildings, scoring the rest from robbing and the spaces that gave bonuses for guns.

January, 18, 2011

2011-01-18T22:22:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Emily, Eitan

Game on Tuesday night since everyone is busy on Wed. Everyone except the participants were busy tonight, too. Emily and Eitan hadn't come in a while, so I was able to try some games with them that I had already tried with others, to see how they go.

Tobago

Jon 57, Eitan 38, Emily 30

First play for both of them. They picked it up quickly enough. Certain implications of play were not entirely obvious to them until I did them, however, which is why I did as well as I did.

It's a fun little game.

Gosu

Emily+, Eitan, Jon

Gili and Nadine didn't go for this, but I thought Emily and Eitan might; I was right. While they acknowledged that it had some problems, they both liked it.

The biggest problems are still the physical implementation: you can't read anything on the board without peering at it closely, and you have to read every card on the table and in your hand (and sometimes every card in the discard pile) over and over. You can't even read the card names at a distance, so even when you become familiar with a card by its name, it's not much help.

Another problem is the interminably long time you may have to wait after you pass before the next round starts.

Otherwise, it's a game of fighting against the rules and limitations imposed by the game itself, moreso than your opponents. This may float some boats, but I don't think it's going to work well in my group.

January 12, 2011

2011-01-13T22:50:00.002+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin

Wow, we're back up to four people. Woot!

Gosu

Jon, Nadine, Gili

I bought this because I'd heard it was a cross between Magic and something, I saw some demo videos, and it looked like it might fit some of the group. It was not a hit with us three, and I'll tell you why.

You start the game with 7 cards and 2 tokens. On your turn you can play a card, play a token, or pass. If you pass, you can't play for the rest of the round. You play a card in front of you like you do in Fairy Tale, only here you have to play certain cards before you can play other cards, and you have strict limits on how many cards and how many of each type.

Most cards do something when they come into play, such as let you draw a card, or flip over or discard one of your opponents' cards, or they have some global effect.

You can play your tokens to draw a card (play both to draw three) or to activate certain cards' abilities.

The round ends after everyone has passed, and the player with the most points from cards in play gains a VP. Everyone un-flips all of their cards and gets back their two tokens. However, you do not clear the board or draw any more cards. You just start the next round.

The game ends when someone has three VP.

The game has a steep learning curve. We had no idea what was going on for a while. We had no idea how the second and subsequent rounds would make any sense if you didn't draw cards between rounds and you already had basically full boards; wouldn't whomever was winning just keep winning? We didn't know why anyone would pass if they had cards to play to increase their score; holding them back for future rounds didn't seem to make sense.

We were hampered in all of this by cards that are not intuitive or clear. The text of what they do is small and hard to read from any distance. A card's effect might occur when it comes into play, or out of play, or while it's in play, or when it is mutated, or some other event occurs, but there's no obvious way to know which card does what from the wall of 20 or 30 cards in play on the table at any one time. (We figure out that a yellow halo around a number means some kind of general effect, but that was the extent of it.)

It appears that the game was played and designed by a group of guys who knew the cards inside out and didn't take into account that new players don't have their familiarity. That's probably not true; probably all the new players they tested it on were teenage Magic geeks who have a greater love for figuring out how a game works than actually playing the game.

Despite all of this, I could tell that there was something to the game. As the first round went on, I began to see how cards interacted and the opportunities for making interesting combinations. When the second turn began, we got new cards through spending our tokens; they were never used to activate powers, because we would have needed some other way to get new cards at the beginning of the round ... think.

Gili was far behind at the end of round one, but she won round two, so it's definitely possible for a lot to happen from one round to the next.

There were two other problems. First of all, there's nothing to do on other players' turns, and these can take a long time with the wrong players. And second of all, there's nothing to do once you've passed until the end of the round, and that can take an even longer time.

We quit after two rounds. I'd like to get more familiar with the cards and try again with two players.

Tobago

Nadine 39, Gili 35, Jon 35, Binyamin 21

Second play for me, first play for everyone else. Tobago hits a light spot where Carcassonne, Settlers, and Ticket to Ride hit. It's got a light theme, pretty components - but not too many, and a quick, clear ending. It's got too much luck to be very strategic. While there are a lot of choices as to what to do on a round, there's not a great loss if you make a slightly worse choice or a slightly better choice: place your card here or there mostly doesn't matter, except near the end of the game.

The defining mechanism of the game is the most fun, and that's figuring out what spaces on the board get defined by the cards as they come into play. The other defining mechanism, the treasure distribution, is where the luck comes in, and it screwed over Binyamin once, which was once too many for him. Actually, as long as you have at least one amulet, it's not that big of a deal. All things being fairly equal, the winner is essentially random, You have to play quite well, or specifically well in the way the game is going, to win regardless of mild-swings of luck. Nadine managed to play specifically well for the way our game went, without knowing that she was doing it.

Gili very much like it.

Carson City

Jon, Nadine, Binyamin

First play for Binyamin. We only managed to get in two rounds of this before Binyamin had to leave for the night. However, it was enough for Binyamin to know that he wants to buy the game to have for the groups he teaches.

We played with 2 red cards and 5 yellow cards, and also with the three gun token worth only two guns as far as gunfights go but three guns as far as scoring and money and so on. It didn't matter too much; we really have to play this with four or five players.

January 05, 2011

2011-01-07T01:08:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili

Another small game night, and all these new games to play, too.

Dominion/Prosperity

Jon 95, Nadine 85, Gili 65

First play of all the new Prosperity kingdoms for me. We had the treasure that lets you get a Gold, but then we also had Thief. Ouch. Nadine and Gili took early thieves and nearly emptied me out. I had to take one just to take back some of my stuff. However, since they weren't trashing Coppers like I was, my Golds and Platinums didn't help them as much as they helped me.

One nifty combo I had was the new Reaction card that let you take cards you gained and put them onto the top of your deck + Thief to take the cards + Castle to give two actions so I could play them both.

Carson City

Nadine 41+, Jon 41-, Gili 35ish.

None of us had played, or even read the rules. We punched out the game and I read the rules quickly to set us up. The game looked a hell of a lot like Caylus, and it played a little like it, but nowhere near enough to bother me.

In CC, you have the Caylus-like track of spaces on which to put workers. The middle spaces of the track get buildings that, if you place your workers, you can place onto the plots you own on the grid-like board. A round consists of: taking a role (like Age of Steam), placing your workers, executing the spaces one at a time (losing your placed workers in the process), returning money in excess of what you can keep to the bank (every $10 returned = 1 point), getting new workers.

The roles give you free money, or plots, or discounts on buildings, or extra guns.

You can place your workers on the game board; if you do, then when the "get plots" action happens, you can buy the plot.

You can place your worker on someone's building; if you do, when the "collect income" action happens, you steal half of that building's income.

You can place a worker on the same place that other people have their worker(s); if you do, when it is time to get the benefit for the space, you each roll a d6 and add your guns and unplaced workers to see who gets the space; the loser gets his worker back as if it was unplaced, the winner loses his worker but gets the space. So, as you lose fights, your strength grows (you gain in unplaced workers).

During income, your buildings generate income based on how many specific board features they are near or that you own. From $0 to $40.

How do you get points? The last actions in the track are taking points for various things that you have (guns, plots, etc...) or in exchange for paying $2/1, $3/1, $4/1, or $5/1. The cheaper options disappear as the game goes on, and people can fight over them like they can fight over other space.

After four rounds, the game ends. Toss out the money you are forced to toss at $10/1 points, and the remaining money at $6/1 point. Gain 2 points for every occupied plot you have on the board. That's about it.

It looked complicated, as these things do, but execution was smooth and intuitive for the most part. The surprising part was figuring out how to get points efficiently, and how the gun battles worked.

Nadine took the point conversion space in round 2, when neither Gili nor I did; we didn't "get" it. As a result, she was a round ahead of us in scoring. That we caught up as much as we did was amazing.

Gun battles are kind of a problem, and not only because they involve dice and I don't like dice-based combat. There is a role that gives you a 3 gun advantage for the turn; as you can see, that's essentially automatic victory for all battles, all else being equal.

There is also a space that allows you to get a 3 gun advantage for the turn. You would think that this would cancel out the one given by the role, except that acquiring this space may involve a battle, which will be won by the guy with the most guns already, which means the guy who took the role that gives the 3 gun advantage. That's weird. It seems to me that a 2 gun advantage for both of these would have been better.

On the other hand, there were turns where none of us actually fought any battles; on the third hand, we were only three players. That won't happen in a five player game.

So, with this reservation, we all liked the game. Like many such games, you really want to do a whole lot more each round than you have workers for.

December 29, 2010

2010-12-30T18:43:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nechama

Slow game nights for some reason. A pity, because I have new games to play.

Dominion/Prosperity

Jon 58, Nechama 44, Gili 44

Such as Dominion Prosperity. I played with 5 cards from the basic set and 5 from Prosperity, and included Platinum and Colonies. The Prosperity cards included 3 treasures, a 5 cost card that gave curses, and the 7 cost boosted upgrade.

The set is fun and interesting, which is what I expected it to be. The addition of colonies meant that getting to "only 8" was now not good enough, although it was still better than "only 7" was before Prosperity. It also raised the expected number of end-game victory points. However, I now have Intrigue, Seaside, and Prosperity, and I am not interested in Alchemy or any other expansion for a long time. It will take years to play through the cards we already have.

Unfortunately, this was (equivalently) the first play for Nechama, who struggles with English and is not a fast game learner in general, so in retrospect a first game with several complicated cards was not my best choice. The game took 2 hours.

I love trashing cards, especially when I can Throne Room and do it twice in one go. I didn't get to 11 often, but I traded some Provinces up to Colonies. Gili thought she was much further behind than she was because she didn't get any Colonies. However, Nechama actually alternated between Colony picks and garbage on alternate rounds.

Settlers of Catan

Nechama 10, Gili 9, Jon 9

I suggested this, since Nechama had played it before. However, we had to explain the rules to her as if it were her first play. This one took 1.5 hours, and Nechama was surprised at how little time it took.

Ore was in short supply; However I managed to find two complementary spots, each next to the harbor for the good that the other one produced. Gili started with an early army. We underestimated Nechama's position; she had good brick and wood and used them well to get to five settlements and Longest Road. A city and another settlement and then game.

December 22, 2010

2010-12-24T00:14:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili

Weird to only have one guest.

1955

Jon+, Gili

Gili requested this, since she only played half a game with Nadine last time. After an email or two with the designer I finally got the rules right: I had thought you could add multiple cards and also get the +1 bonus when playing in an area matching the card flags and also containing your spy. The correct rules - either a single bonus card OR a +1 - made blocking easier, and thus made the special abilities of the cards stronger. Gili likes the game.

After three games, I have yet to use most of the abilities, and some of them I find rather anemic. Scratch scratch. This may be a case of group-think. There's something flat about the game. It's nice and all, and it's quick and playable, but it doesn't seem to have a story arc. Maybe I just haven't hit it, yet.

Schotten Totten

Gili+, Jon+

I taught this to Gili. Again, after downloading files from BGG, I finally played this with the correct rules: we completely screwed up the special cards the first two times I played.

We started with no special cards. We exhausted the deck, and the score was 4 Gili to 3 me. Gili's final card play gave each of us a stone.

We played a second time using the special cards. Used correctly, they're not as unbalancing as I had feared.

Race For The Galaxy

Jon 61, Gili 29

I previously thought that this was a good game marred by the ability for one person to ram through the game end, depriving most strategies of viability and the game of much of its fun. I know other games that suffer from the same problem.

When that doesn't happen in this game, as it didn't in ours, the game is quite interesting. I've never been very good at it. Which makes my blowout victory here a surprise.

I started with a first round 6 point development, the one that gives a -2 discount for all other developments. Add to that some military strength and my game strategy was essentially locked in. The rest was just fishing for cards.

Gili played something more diverse, but never got enough shipping strength to force through to the game end that way.

December 15, 2010

2010-12-18T23:16:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Nechama, Binyamin, Mace

This report is done without notes and a few days after the session, so it's pretty anemic in terms of facts. I sold off a number of games to Binyamin. Making room for a few games on the way.

1955

Nadine+, Jon

I was sent this game in prototype form (pretty well done for a prototype, actually) to review. The game is, as of this posting, on Kickstarter.

The theme is the Cold War of 1955. Two players use card-driven mechanics to achieve political influence in 6 countries. On your turn, you play two cards, refill your hand, and move your spy. You win if you gain control of your opponent's country or if you gain control of any three countries.

The game immediately stuck in my head as "1960-lite". Cards allow you to either add the influence to the location identified on the card (or your home country or the country in which your spy is) or let you take the special action, but not both.

I sent some comments to the publisher. When I get a response, I will post a review on Purple Pawn.

Nadine and I each secured our own countries and one other. We fought back and forth for the remaining countries, and Nadine took it in a surprise victory.

Nadine, Gili

They played, but I don't think they finished the game.

Navegador

Binyamin 110ish, Nechama 94, Jon 91

Binyamin brought his copy and taught us. It's a fantastic game by the creator of Antike, also with a rondel, but this time with no direct confrontation. You can only take items that others need before they get to them. It's a tight economic game, and if you don't have your engine going early, you're in trouble, like I was. I finished much higher than I anticipated, actually.

A must-buy for our group. I was planning on buying Shipyard, and now I think I need both.

Louis XIV

Mace, Nadine, Gili

I don't remember what happened, except that they all ended with the same number of completed missions.

Schotten Totten

Binyamin, Jon

Binyamin was going to buy this from me, but he didn't. I had never actually played, so he taught me. It's actually better than I expected, since Lost Cities is always held as a great two-player card game and I never liked it. This is better. Luck with the special cards plays too big a role, however. Either we didn't know what we were doing (we only had the German instructions and the symbols on the special cards are worthless, so that's possible) or we need to find a way to equalize the cards or just play without them.

Bridge

Jon, Mace, Binyamin, Nadine

I don't even remember who partnered with whom.

November 29, 2010

2010-11-30T19:06:00.001+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, Mace, David K, Binyamin, Rivka, Toby, XXX

Game night was moved to Monday night owing to Hanukkah and events thereupon. Binyamin brought his wife Rivka a little late. I was going to play a three player game with them while I played Power Grid with the others, but then Toby (friend of my daughter) arrived, bringing someone new whose name I forgot. Neither Toby nor unnamed had played in the club before, to my knowledge.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Nadine 48, Gili 45, Jon 31

Kingdoms: Bureaucrat, Feast, Steward, Ironworks, Trading Post, Nobles, Haven, Native Village, Bazaar, Treasury

No extra buys in the set. No one bought Bureaucrat or Ironworks. We all tried different five point buildings, with Nadine starting on the Treasures. However, we all moved to get Treasures ourselves, eventually. I bought the first Noble and the first Province, but my luck didn't hold out well. We all pretty much knew that Nadine was winning.

Power Grid - Benelux

Nadine 13+, David 13-, Jon 12, Gili 11+, Mace 11-

First play for Mace, and I think all of our first play on the Benelux map (one or two of the others might have played on it once before). The different fuel arrangement doesn't make much of a difference, and neither does the occasional extra green power plant, but cycling out the lowest plant each round makes a big difference. We all ramped up in power plants pretty quickly, with the exception of Gili.

I took a look at the board before the first round, slapped my hand on my head and said that David was going to screw me in round seven. Lo and behold, the game lasted seven rounds because David ended the game precipitously, leaving me with far less than I would have had had the game gone on one round longer. He ended the game with 15 cities though he could only power 13, hoping that Nadine wouldn't be able to build to 13; but she could, and still had enough money left to win.

Mace, as new players tend to, played a lot of green.

Phoenicia

Binyamin+, Toby, Rivka, XXX

Binyamin set this up and explained it to Rivka when Toby and XXX walked in. This game is a bit more complicated than I would normally inflict on new players, but that's the way it rumbled. They caught on by round two or so, and I think they enjoyed it, though they did say it was complicated at the end.

Binyamin was counting out his money at the end trying to find a way to do more than tie for first, when someone pointed out to him a discount he could apply, which let him get an extra point without much difficulty.

I told them before the game started that they couldn't get change from their money cards when paying for auctions, which I think was incorrect in retrospect. Anyone have the rules in front of them?

Bridge

Jon/David, Mace/Nadine

We played a few hands. While he played Phoenicia, Binyamin coached Mace.

November 24, 2010

2010-11-25T21:12:00.001+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Mace, Gili, Nechama, Binyamin

Hoody hoo. It's game night.

Parade

Jon 5, Nadine 8, Gili 13, Mace 22, Nechama 31

First plays for Mace and Nechama. A good filler. Some find this too chaotic for 5, but I think it's still good with 5. I think this is the first time I've won.

Age of Empires III

Jon 117, Binyamin 110, Mace 93

First play for Mace. Binyamin usually plays with his children, and he found us a bit more challenging.

I told Binyamin about the area scoring rule, which we had always previously overlooked; namely, that there needs to be three guys in a region before it will score. He thought that that ruined one of the main strategies of the game. But when he read the rule from the book, it turned out that what I said was wrong, too. In fact, there needs to be three guys from a single player in a region to score. Oh.

Our game ha a lot of takebacks. It started with me. For some reason I thought that the initiative track applies only to the next round; i.e. you get the money immediately, but the tie breaking for the merchant ship stays as the current first player. Apparently I was wrong.

As a result of this, I placed the wrong people in the merchant ship area, allowing Mace to take it on his last move. Binyamin then told a confused me the rule, and I insisted that we take back the last two placements. Which annoyed him. However, both of them took back several actions later during the game, and I switched the specialist I put down at least once.

The $20 tile didn't show up; if it had, I would have tossed it. I took the $5 tile on the first turn, however, and I managed to get another tile on the second turn. Mace picked up a second on turn three. Binyamin hardly picked up any the whole game, except for the last two turns. But he had a lot of guys on the board.

Mace ended up being the money king, though, with 24 income, not including $10/round from a tile (lucky for us, only picked up in round 6). He also had the one that stole money from the other players equal to the number of merchant ships he had (from 2 up to 4), and the one that gave him 1 VP/$5 he had at the end of the game (18 points). Binyamin thought he might be winning. But he was woefully shy of guys on the board.

I took the most number of buildings, which usually equals victory for me. I was behind Binyamin with guys on the board, but I was the first to bring soldiers and shoot (once). I had a number of second places and a good enough income. It was actually a pretty close game in the end.

Vegas Showdown

Nadine 78-, Nechama 61, Gili 61

Nadine's score is a problem, since it turns out that she placed, utilized, and scored a building on her board illegally, which she only discovered was illegal when Binyamin pointed it out after the scoring. She still would have won. First play for Nechama.

Bridge

Jon/Nadine, Binyamin/Mace

We played a few hands.

November 17, 2010

2010-11-18T16:39:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Mace, Nadine, Elijah

Five person game night, essentially one game.

Nile

Gili 0/2/2/3/4, Mace 0/1/1/2/4, Jon 0/0/3/3/3

The haters weren't around to nay-say, so we tried this one yet again. Each time it's about the same, but I don't really know what that is. It's not good. But it's not bad, either. There's too much luck and frustration. You've got a trading ability that looks like it was added to counteract the luck. But then you've got the Plague of Locusts which exacerbates it.

It's not long, there's a funny moment or two when luck trashes someone's plans, but there's no hook. Sorry.

I couldn't get the two fields that I needed, despite trying for them through three cycles of the deck. And that's that.

La Citta

Nadine 36, Jon 26, Elijah 25, Mace 22, Gili 14

First plays for Mace and Elijah. We tend to take a long time on our games, especially the five-player games, and this was no exception. It took 4 hours. For all of that, I only felt the drag a few times.

We don't play it often. It's an interesting game, a strange mix of the fiddly and elegant. The essential mechanics - not too few and not too many people at any one time, how the cities steal people from each other - are elegant. The implementation, on the other hand, has lots of little pieces, and lots and lots of counting and recounting. They gave you markers to count your food production, so why didn't they give you markers to count your people?

Even when you can count your people, you have to evaluate and re-evaluate what's going to happen to them at the end of each turn; it's not random, but it's not entirely under your control. Interesting.

The action card mechanic lets you take a mediocre card only to reveal a better card for your LHO, is a bad mechanic, just like the power plant reveals in Power Grid. A better mechanic would be for each player to have a set of cards they can use, either in the order of their choosing or by picking them from a deck. This is used well in several other games.

Oh well. The positives outweigh the negatives. It's a fun, challenging game.

In our game, Nadine stuck to the edge of the board where only I could threaten her, which I didn't do often enough. She also had rich farmland, which spelled success. Mace and Elijah fought each other, while I trapped Gili in the middle of the board. On my last turn, on my last action, I plopped down a last castle in a suddenly open space, netting one food production and two people. I miscounted by one, however, and ended up losing one person and gaining the 5 point penalty for last round loss. Luckily, everyone else except Nadine also lost on the last round.

November 10, 2010

2010-11-11T20:36:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Mace, Nadine, Gili, Nechama, Elijah, Rachel A

Looks like we're stuck with small game nights for a while. I apologize that I'm writing this without notes right now, so I'm missing some of the scores and the names of the new Puerto Rico expansion buildings.

Yinsh

Jon 3, Mace 0

I taught this to Mace, who didn't take well to it.

El Grande

Mace 98, Jon 94, Nadine, Elijah, Gili/Nechama

First plays for Mace and Nechama. Nechama actually played as a team with Gili. Our group tends to run long with certain games, and this is one of them. It took about three and a half hours.

Nadine has a habit of winning this game, which I tell everyone whenever she plays, much to her annoyance. She believes that people will prjudicely gang up on her as a result, which they don't really do until she starts winning. I haven't looked at the records recently, but I'm pretty sure she really does win most of her games. She started off ok in this one, too, but eventually fell behind.

I usually try for a "second-place in many regions" strategy, which works right until the card that scores only the first place in every region shows up and kills me. In this game I actually didn't have that many cubes on the board at all. Somehow, through the judicious placing in lightly contested areas and some interim scoring cards, it looked like I was winning about mid-way during the game. Of course, in El Grande, it's better to be second place, because first place gets ganged up on. And wouldn't you know, second place Mace pulled to a close victory in the end.

Mace poured a lot of his cubes into the Castillo. He, and Nadine and Gili/Nechama, contested heavily for a few places, sometimes with 10 or more cubes each in one area. Actually, the only reason I did as well as I did was choosing the right place for my Castillo placements on rounds 3 and 6; I chose wrongly on round 9, which cost me 3 points (just shy of winning, anyway).

Puerto Rico + Nobles expansion

Mace 49, Jon 46, Nadine, Rachel

The three of us are far more experienced at Purerto Rico than Mace is, but a) that doesn't mean that we win, since we all hold each other in check, and b) this was the first play of the Nobles expansion for all of us. I used every nobles building, using the standard non-expansion buildings for the other slots.

It first seemed that the nobles are an absolute must-have. Mayor was taken nearly every single round. And some of the buildings that used nobles, especially in combination, were pretty strong. For instance, the 7 and 8 cost buildings together gave you +1 noble each mayor phase and +$1 for each noble you had each craftsman phase, respectively. That's strong. But it's not really stronger than a Factory/Harbor combination.

The 2 cost building that lets you trade a $1 for a plantation or a plantation for a $1 was very weak. Very very weak, even with the 4 cost building that gives you points for having the least number of plantations. On the other hand, the 3 cost building that gives you either a $1 or a points each round was very strong. Very, very strong. On the other hand, both of the players who took that building - Rachel and Nadine - lost, and both of them were corn players, too.

Nadine shipped good points with the 6 point semi-harbor. But in the end, Mace's and my buildings proved to be the major point earners.

November 03, 2010

2010-11-04T14:50:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Mace, Binyamin, Gili, Nechama, Nadine

Still low attendance, though at least we have two simul games running

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Binyamin 63, Jon 44, Mace 42

Kingdoms: Council Room, Coppersmith, Torturer, Trading Post, Duke, Harem, Embargo, Salvager, Ghost Ship, Envoy

A game without a single extra action, and nothing to buy for 3 coins except Silver, yet we were hitting 8 or more coins already at round 3. Binyamin's third turn was Coppersmith and four copper.

When I saw Duke during the setup, I almost tossed it out; I had a bad experience with it last time and was pretty sure that I don't like the card. Sure, everyone can buy them; but everyone HAS to buy them, which kind of ruins the fun of the game. The fun is to try to find the good combinations, not to force all players to go for the only one that dominates.

I left it in to give it one more try. However, the results were just as bad as last time. Binyamin ended the game with five Duchys and five Dukes and as you can see, that was enough to slaughter us.

We were skeptical about the worth of Embargo. However, with not much else to do with 2 coins, both Binyamin and Mace picked up one or two. All three were used on the Province deck, which made the Duke strategy that much stronger. If they were used on the Dukes, maybe the game would have been more interesting. Now that I think about it, that was really my main option for fighting Dukes.

I chose kingdoms based on my love of trashing cards. I took curses from Embargo and Torturer because I could trash them. I trashed golds to buy Provinces (when they only had two embargo chips on them). But it wasn't enough

There were several attacks, but Mace's single Torturer was the only one bought.

R-Eco

Nadine 40, Gili, Nechama

First play for Nechama. Nadine slaughtered them both.

Settlers of Catan

Jon 11, Gili 7, Nechama 7

First play for Nechama. I played this at the same time as Tigris and Euphrates.

I placed my settlements last (3 and 4), which is generally good, but the two of them took the only good wheat and brick locations. With a strong city strategy, I dominated some middle numbers. The 6 rolled far more often than the 8, which was good for me: I was on one 6 hex, and the robber spent most of the game on their 6 hex.

I had a setback when, without any access to brick, I traded four ore for a brick in order to fall under 7 cards. Gili rolled, putting me over 7 cards, and then Nechama rolled a 7. I lost half of my cards and then Nechama stole my brick.

I got Nechama to take longest road right before Gili could take it and win. Then I stole longest army from Gili to win.

Tigris and Euphrates

Jon 8/8/11/12, Binyamin 8/8/9/11, Mace 7/7/9/12, Nadine 5/5/6/6

First play for Mace. I played this at the same time as Settlers of Catan. It seemed to end up as my turn in both games quite often.

I played first and gave Binyamin a nice location for his first Trader. After that it was the usual game play. I built both monuments, taking only one point from each of them each round (and letting others take the other points). Ultimately, Binyamin lost because he had a shortage of red tiles during the game and didn't try to fetch any.

Mace was also close to winning, as happens in this game. But we make the wrong decisions when we don't know exactly when the game will end.

Mr Jack

Gili, Nechama

First play for Nechama, but I don't know the results.

San Fransisco

Jon 34, Nadine 20, Mace 15, Binyamin 11

First play for everyone but Binyamin.

As I heard the explanation, my heart sank. The game appeared to be a straightforward version of "pick the highest number between 1 and 10; duplicate guesses are eliminated; highest remaining guess wins". Which, as game theorists will tell you, means that the optimal solution is to play randomly.

To elaborate: The game board is a series of boxes (city blocks), and you bid to place your "roads" on the board. Whenever you have an indisputable majority of roads around a block, you win the points for the block: generally 4-6 points, but in two cases 10 points.

Each round you you blind bid some amount of "money 1" (cash) or "money 2" (influence), both of which run out but will be resupplied occasionally after a block is built. You bid to acquire the privilege of placing a road next to a 4, 5, or 6 point block. As is the nature of roads, by placing a road between two blocks (at least one of which matches the required type) you are staking claim to both of them.

Depending on the round, either the first highest bidder, or the first and second highest bidders, or all bidders, will be able to place a road. By highest bidder, I mean highest among those players who don't duplicate their blind bid numbers. In some auctions, the auction is not blind bidding, but a standard circle auction where the eventual highest bidder takes the privilege.

Play until 12 blocks have been captured.

My fears were not only about the random nature of blind bidding (whose bluffing aspect is supposed to be strategic, but that's really nonsense), but that there didn't seem to be any sort of story arc to the game. Every round you flip, bid, place a road. I could see that as roads got placed on the board, more blocks would be likely to be captured in a round. Still, I was game to try once, to see if I was wrong.

I wasn't entirely wrong, but I was a little wrong. There is a certain enjoyment - and frustration - out of being eliminated for bidding the same amount as someone else. Meh. As you get ready to close off certain blocks, the particular block type you need (4, 5, or 6) becomes relevant, and so slightly changes the stake you have in certain auctions.

But not really. In the game I played, on not one round was one particular auction worth more than another for me. If I needed to close a 4 block here, you could be sure that adjacent to it was the 5 or 6 block that would let me place the road, so that it didn't matter one whit if I won a 4, 5, or 6 auction. Such situations did come up occasionally during the game for the other players, but rarely.

Furthermore, even if you don't need the road this turn, placing it is sure to get you one road away from capturing some other block on the next turn, and also prevent someone else from placing it and scoring. Both money types were returned to you a sufficient number of times during the game that - aside from Binyamin who went broke - the fear of spending wasn't a great obstacle.

So how did it all come together? It wasn't as bad as I feared. I wasn't bored due to repetition and a lack of story arc, since the game went pretty quickly and the auction variations added some interest. There was some light money management, and some light spacial considerations (generally there was a best place to play, but finding it could take a moment or two). I'd play again.

However, I won handily by playing every blind selection event during the game (except the last turn) randomly. I chose my influence cards randomly, I chose the block type bids randomly. I only played the standard auction straight. And I was never the worse for wear. Which proves my point: there is no strategy in "bluffing" games (not to say that some people can't master the tactic of out-bluffing their opponent, but I don't call that strategy).

October 27, 2010

2010-10-28T22:35:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nechama, Nadine, Max, Sergei

Gili brought her friend Nechama, again. Although she doesn't speak English that well, she is enjoying the games and the club.

It's Alive

Nechama 57, Gili 42, Jon 38, Nadine 32

Scores approximate. First play for Nechama. I tried to manage my money well, but I drew very poor tiles for much of the first part of the game, which made life difficult. Happens sometimes.

Steam

Jon 78, Max 70, Gili 40

Scores approximate. First plays for both Gili and Max. Max said that he had never played a train game; however, he had played Ticket to Ride and Power Grid, both of which are train games in their way.

Gili started off poorly, and then sank poorer, hitting -7 on the income track at one point. It was as much as she could do to simply get back up to positive and end with a decent score by the game's end. Most players with reasonable play and approximately equal experience should not fall so far behind during a game.

The bigger problem with the game is the kingmaking at the end, something I wrote about last time. Max and I were fairly close, with me clearly in the lead by a half a dozen points or so. However, if she had wanted to, Gili could easily have given the game to Max by moving cubes on his routes. This disturbs me greatly, because often you have to move on someone else's routes, you have no reason to pick one player over another, and the decision determines the game. Bad.

I think I have a possible solution: points earned by someone else moving on your track can only be used to increase your income, not your victory points. If you are negative on the income track, you're behind anyway; if you're positive, you're gaining 1/2 victory point per track used instead of 1 victory point, a significant mitigating factor. And the gain limits out at 10 income.

If this happened at the beginning of the game, it would be a significant advantage. But toward the end of the game, maxing out at 10 on the income isn't as much of a problem or determination of victory. And yet, you still can gain something from someone else using your track. I'll try this out next game.

The map we played on, the Eastern US, tends to favor a certain building pattern. I didn't mind this, since the actual track paths are always so different, but Max thought this could be a problem. Luckily there are two maps included in the game, and several dozen others available to purchase or download.

I took the East, Gili started in the south, and we grew toward each other. With occasional rogue track placement in the other person's territories. Max started out on the West and eventually merged south with Gili, north and then east and west back down the center of the board to merge with me.

We nearly ran out of player disks, and the game doesn't say what happens if you do. Speaking of running out of things, Max was also annoyed at the rule that you can't build a type of track junction if the tile isn't available; and that it can become available by changing an area of the board that is nowhere near your construction. I think I agree, but I can't see how to change that. Otherwise, he liked the game a lot.

Prince of Florence

Nadine 59, Sergei 58, Nechama 55

Nadine taught this to both of them. And it sounded like she pretty much played both of their positions throughout the game, so close game-ending scores is not a surprise.

Notre Dame

Sergei 69, Nadine 64, Nechama 50

Nadine taught this to both of them. as well. Same story. Sergei won with a heavy car movement strategy.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Max 29, Gili 29, Jon 24

Kingdoms: Remodel, Envoy, Courtyard, Masquerade, Baron, Scout, Haven, Native Village, Explorer, Tactician

A strange set, with lots of drawing and discarding. And a rare pull for us with multiple Seaside kingdoms and only one kingdom from the base set. All three of us made mistakes by reading trash instead of discard or vice versa on some card, or by missing that the Explorer puts the money into your hand: quite a powerhouse of a card.

I tried some combination of Remodel, Native Village (mostly for the 2 actions) and Masquerades, hoping to get some Explorers and so on. But Max pulled an early Tactician and two Provinces faster than you could bat an eye. Gili also pulled two provinces before I could.

We eventually all ended with four Provinces, but I had given away all of my other points (Masquerade, Remodel), while Max (on my right) had five Estates and Gili (on my left) had two Estates and a Duchy.

October 20, 2010

2010-10-21T23:16:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Joey, Nadine, Gili, Mace, Elijah

Joey is a student who dropped by for his first visit.

Nile

Gili 0/1/2/2/3, Joey 0/1/1/2/2, Nadine 0/0/*/*/*, Elijah 0/0/*/*/*, Jon 0/0/0/0/1

We didn't particularly like this game the last time that we played it, but I wanted to give it another go. Actually, someone recommended that I try it two-player, but somehow we ended up playing it with five players. I was expecting total chaos.

I read the rules carefully to ensure that we were playing correctly, and then after a few rounds I realized that we were playing incorrectly, so for the last two-thirds of the game I'm fairly confident we played it correctly. And to our surprise, we actually liked the game, a little.

I wouldn't actually go so far as to say that we liked it a lot. The game is still wayyyy too random and chaotic. And I think, with experience, you will begin to find something strategic to do in a two or three player game. I could tell that I made a mistake or two in my playing, but still. Not nearly enough that I deserved my pathetic score. I guess we'll try it again.

Year of the Dragon

Mace 101, Nadine 90, Gili 85

First play for Mace. Nadine was heard to complain about the painfulness of the decisions, which she actually likes.

Agricola

Joey 46, Elijah 33, Jon 31

I was expecting a greater gap between mine and Elijah's scores, but he had no bonus points in cards.

Joey insisted that we draft out first picks (8 of each, drop the last 1), which added a good fifteen minutes onto the game play. And I still managed to pick crap. Worst, the occupations and improvements that I actually managed to play were unsynergistic, while Joey's and Elijah's were. Elijah had a combo that gave him 4 wheat and a vegetable whenever he took the wheat action.

And Joey sitting on my right made it his business to block whatever I wanted at every move. Knowing that I had no hope of winning, I simply made it my goal to score at least 20 points.

Antike

Jon 9, Joey 7, Elijah 7

I suggested this. First play for Joey. I made it clear at the beginning, however, that points were what mattered, not expansion.

The game was closer than many others that I've played. I started with gold, ELijah started with iron, and Joey with marble. Elijah kept pace with me on the Know How track, and then Joey built some temples and advanced massively on the track as well. Unfortunately, that was after he left a temple open for me to sack.

After sacking the temple, which put me at 5 points, I pretty much knew from where my remaining 4 points were coming. Elijah saw one of them and convinced Joey to sack a few of my cities to delay me a few rounds, but the end was inevitable.

It's Alive

Elijah 50, Jon 44, Joey 43

I think this was the first play for Joey. I was doing fine with my money while the others spent theirs quickly. But somehow I lost most of my money just about when mid-game turned to end-game, and with it went most of my points.

I suggested the game, because I hadn't played it in a while. After playing, I have to say that I still love it.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Jon 46, Joey 39, Elijah 24

Kingdoms: Cellar, Chancellor, Woodcutter, Militia, Remodel, Thief, Great Hall, Torturer, Harem, Black Market

As usual I ended up with half or more of the cards from the main set. I still don't know why, since I pick them randomly.

Joey and I took early Black Markets. He started collecting Golds before me, and then had three Provinces before either Elijah or me had any. I began to draw some Great Halls, Harems, and Golds, and Remodeled two Golds into Provinces. Then I played Thief and took one of Elijah's Harems. I also took several Duchys, sometimes two in one turn.

Vegas Showdown

Mace 79, Gili 71, Nadine 66

First play for Mace. Nadine suggested it.

October 13, 2010

2010-10-14T12:17:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Mace, Gili, Nechama, Elijah, David K

Gili brought her friend Nechama. She pretty much spoke only Hebrew, and my Hebrew isn't terribly good. I hope she enjoyed herself.

San Juan

Elijah 39, Jon 37, Mace 35, Nadine 32

I haven't played this in a while, mostly because I really wish it had a good expansion. I generally remember the game as good, but not particularly special, but when I play it it's always a slightly better game than I remember.

Nadine wasn't particularly looking forward to playing it. This was Mace's first play.

Elijah started with an early Prefecture followed by an early Library and Tobacco. Nadine started with Coffee and Mace with Carpenter. I had nothing to build in the first round. I finally got a Prefecture going by round 3, however, and Nadine built the third. Meanwhile, Mace built Quarry to go with his Carpenter and also ended the game with both City Hall and Palace.

I had Guild Hall, but it wasn't enough.

R-Eco

David 26, Nechama 15, Gili 10

First play for Nechama. David was the only player who tossed out cards, and he tossed out 8 of them. Apparently illegal dumping pays off.

Taj Mahal

Elijah 34, Gili 32, Nechama 32, Mace 29, Nadine 28

First plays for Nechama and Mace. It was apparently Elijah's night, and apparently not Nadine's night.

Oddly for a five player game, commodities didn't do to well and path connections did pretty well. I saw a few fierce battles out of the corner of my eye.

Magic: the Gathering

David+++, Jon+

We played with roughly the same cards that I played with Mace last time, having not properly mixed the random card pile before drafting.

I honestly thought that I had a decent chance at winning a few games with a W/G deck, 8 Plains to 6 Forests and mostly white cards. However most of my games came down to mana screw again. I drew 5 forests and no plains for much of the first game. I drew 3 forests and no other land at all for nearly all of the last game.

I won game 2 partly because David didn't draw quite enough land to support his G/U/R deck, and partly because he drew a few times from his discards by accident instead of from his deck. I thought I was dong well, with a few white cards that sent his creatures back to his deck and a few direct disenchant spells, neutralizing all of his enchantments. But apparently I was fooling myself.

I was doing fine in game 3, but I left myself blockerless at 14 life against his 1/1 creature, and he won instantly with two Giant Growth's and a spell that lets his creature deal its power in damage to target creature or player.

Mu

David 217, Mace 129, Jon 108, Nadine 55, Elijah 36

I gave this game the short shrift after our previous and first encounter with it, as it seemed like the strength of your cards determined your success and that the play with five players was somewhat random. It appeared to work better with four players, but that made the game kind of irrelevant since there are some much better four-player card games at hand.

Feedback on the Geek guilted me into giving this another try. Elijah and Nadine both vaguely remembered not liking the game, but unspecifically enough that they were willing to try it again. This was the first play for both David and Mace.

This time was a much better experience. In fact, even Nadine admitted that she found the game interesting after a few hands. Everyone else also said that they liked it.

I got a lot of laughs when explaining the rules, which are not really that complicated, though each of the few major rules has a number of niggly points to make it work, and the two tables (bid vs points required, points taken vs bonus) just have to be memorized or referred to on each hand. But it's really not all that complicated if you're used to other trick taking or bidding games, especially those that reward points based on the specific cards taken (as opposed to tricks taken).

The each-man-for-himself aspect works fairly well. As the hands progressed we began to feel the game was less random, and possibly even less luck-dependent on the cards (thought still highly so), and more for the strategy of the bidding and play. And our bidding got more aggressive.

Looks like this will hit the table again, after all.

October 06, 2010

2010-10-08T00:09:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Mace, Gili, Elijah

Still a small group. Many regulars have moved away.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Nadine 28, Mace 28, Jon 22, Gili 1

Kingdoms: Chapel, Workshop, Throne Room, Market, Ironworks, Lighthouse, Warehouse, Navigator, Sea Hag, Wharf

I started with an early Chapel, but it never managed to dump more than one copper and one Estate. As a result, the rest of my game felt a lack of synergy, and I watched Mace and Nadine begin drawing Provinces well before I could. Lighthouse seemed to be a good card here, but Mace made Ironworks and Navigator sing.

Gili's score was her initial three Estates and two curses.

Elijah 28, Jon 22, Mace 21, Nadine 15

I insisted on playing the same kingdoms again, since I was sure that a better start with Chapel would give me better results. And it did, indeed, start better, with me getting to 6 or 7 fairly quickly and buying golds. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of thinking that just because Lighthouse worked well in the last game meant that it would work well in this game, too. It didn't.

Nadine took Sea Hags this time to annoy other people, but I dumped them all. I'm not really sure how Elijah won.

Phoenicia

Gili 34, Elijah 31, Jon 27, Mace 26, Nadine 25.

First plays for Mace and Elijah, but Gili, Nadine, and I had to relearn the rules, anyway.

I started off convinced that someone behind was going to stay behind throughout the game. However, Gili started off behind and went on to win. I started off in the middle and then fell behind for most of the game, but I somehow made it back to the middle on the last round. So I may be wrong.

We're still playing with the introductory rules, which include each player starting with a 5 money card and each player only able to collect 1 "building" per turn. We'll have to try without the latter rule in the future.

At the present, I think the game is quite balanced with many different options. It seems like you have to get workers and advanced industry to thrive, but you don't really. So I don't know how to win, yet.

Tichu

Jon/Mace 330, Elijah/Nadine 70

First play for Mace. We played two hands, and I called and made two Tichus.

September 26, 2010: Games Day

2010-09-27T00:20:00.002+02:00

Participants: Jon, Mace, Shachar, Nadine, Elijah, Saarya, Michael, Oren, Yardena, Tal, Rachel

Small Games Day, I think because Janglo, the local mailing list that usually publicizes the event, is no longer all that effective. Still, it was fun for all involved, I believe.

Age of Empires III

Elijah 120, Oren 110, Nadine 82, Shachar 69

Played at the end of the day. First plays for Oren and Shachar. They complained about the building that gives you money from each other player equal to the number of merchant ships that you possess. It is the only building that affects other players, and it dulls the strategy of its possessor.

Agricola

Nadine 44, Shachar 42, Elijah 39, Mace 35, Saarya 31

First plays for Mace, Shachar, and Saarya. According to Nadine, Saarya may have counted player numbers on cards as victory points. The game took five hours.

Antike

Jon 8, Elijah 5, Michael 5, Shachar 3

This is one of the few games I love that I also seem to consistently win. I don't expect this to last, however. I focus on the victory points, not on conquering cities and other players, and I expect to have a lot more challenge (I think this has happened in some of the games I've played) when the other players catch on to this.

I played Greece, rather then my favorite, the Phoenicians. My first play was for gold and Market, followed by a temple, some fleets to ward off players on all sides, and then Democracy. Then five cities, seven seas, and a few more know hows.

Shachar was the Phoenicians, and he simply expanded, while keeping away from my glistening three state fortress and one space in all directions. Michael was the Germans, and he spread out throughout the north rather quickly and then harassed Elijah, who played the Romans. Elijah built some monuments, and then spent his time trying to protect them from Micahel who was always threatening to conquer them.

My final act was to take the last unclaimed known how (Roads). Michael was one move away from preventing me from getting it. Shachar could have prevented it, but he was so far behind that he decided to just conquer my cities and let me win. If he had taken the know how, it would have delayed me one round, after which I could have gotten the bonus point from level two in all the know hows, anyway. (I was also threatening to conquer one of Shachar's temples.)

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Jon 44, Mace 37, Shachar 17

Kingdoms: Cellar, Village, Bureaucrat, Throne Room, Council Room, Harem, Haven, Ambassador, Lookout, Outpost

More Seaside than usual, but still half from the base set. Why does that always happen when I draw randomly?

I took only a modest amount of Villagers, as well as Council Room, Throne Room, and Ambassador. Elijah managed some nice synergy with Haven and Outpost. I originally thought Lookout was weak because I thought it could be used on the cards in your hands. When I realized that you had to pick three random cards to which to apply the effect, I realized that the card sucked. I'm not thrilled with the balance on several of the cards in both Intrigue or Seaside.

Homesteaders

Jon 55, Oren 47, Micahel 41

First plays for both of them. I misplayed twice, taking building auctions for one type of building when I was really planning to build some other type. Second-to-last round, I was locked out of the bidding, and I was not far enough on the railroad track to gain much from it. I was determined hell or high water to get something on the last round, however, which I did, and it was worth over 20 points for me (minus a point or two given up by my having to pay $9 for the privilege).

Michael snared the buildings I wanted (such as Bank) due to my bidding miscalculations, and I wasn't sure that I was winning until that last round.

Oren liked the game.

Magic: the Gathering x 2

Jon++, Mace

Mace hadn't played in a really long time (fourth edition, I think). He was rusty on a few rules. We Rochester drafted from the new cards I bought on eBay.

Our first game, we were both mana glutted, but he didn't have enough creatures in his deck to thwart me. I won fairly early.

In our second game, we entered a standoff for most of the game. However, I had already beat him down to 6 points, while I was sill at 18. Enter the Rod of Ruin on my side, versus a tapping damage prevented on his side, which meant that I could get 1 point through every two turns. In the meantime, he was hitting me for two points each turn with an artifact that required 5 mana to cycle through each point of damage that it dealt to me.

At one point I attacked with everything and cast an instant that gave all of my creatures +2/+2 and first strike, only to have him Fog. Then he attacked with the one creature he could afford to (with Vigilance; he was three points shy of killing me with a full-out assault, and would not have been able to afford the return attack), only to have me Pit Trap and kill it. Back to stalemate and pings.

Eventually, he had three creatures tapped to deal his pinging damage, I had seven creatures able to attack against his four blockers, and he was at two life. He could blast one with an instant, but couldn't prevent the remaining damage. There were six cards left in my deck.

Mr. Jack

Jon+, Michael+

I taught this to Michael. We each won once as Criminal, him on turn three (I goofed), and me on turn 7.

Parade

Elijah 20, Shachar 25, Jon 83

I taught this to them, though I think they had each played once before. My inglorious defeat was due to a tremendously bad hand and a timidity at taking cards. If I had taken more, I would have dome better.

Puerto Rico

Nadine 50, Mace 49, Yardena 48, Rachel 40, Oren 38

First play for Mace. Yardena is self-taught and has played with her kids; this was her first play with another group, and we corrected a few minor errors. I think everyone believed that Nadine was running away with the game, but it was pretty close in the end.

Nadine adds: Rachel realized that Yardena might be winning due to huge shipping, she had a wharf and factory, and harbor at the very end, no big building. I had factory and two big buildings, but low shipping.

Scrabble

Yardena played this with Tal for a while. They didnt' play for points, just for fun. Tal had to leave, and Rachel took over. Even so, they abandoned the game mid-way.

September 15, 2010

2010-09-16T16:10:00.001+02:00

Participants: Jon, Debbie, Nadine, David K, Gili

We skipped last week, the holidays wreak havoc on the game night schedule. Debbie is a friend of Rachel's who decided to join us for game night. Hopefully, she'll come again.

Dominion

Jon 43, Nadine 42, Debbie 34

First play for Debbie. Brave soul. She did pretty well, too. We decided to stick to the basic set to make things easier on her (this decision was reached from experience).

Kingdoms: Moat, Village, Woodcutter, Feast, Militia, Smithy, Festival, Laboratory, Mine, Adventurer

As we said a few times during the game, many good choices. I took an early Village and Militia, but then took a few golds, which make the Village underused for a while. Should I have taken Festivals instead? I eventually took some, a Moat and some Smithies.

Nadine took Feasts, Festivals, and a Laboratory. She started with silver instead of Village. Debbie also took an early Militia and a Woodcutter. No one took Mine, though it would have been nice to get rid of all of those coppers.

In the end, I won by taking an Estate before Nadine ended the game. I had two earlier Provinces, and she thought for sure that I was winning, but I knew it was closer than she thought.

Tichu

Jon/Nadine 555, David/Debbie 45

First play for Debbie. She wasn't sure how to help her partner, but she was able to play well enough after three hands.

I opened with an made a Grand Tichu, with my partner going out second to boot. Second hand, I set David in a Tichu (I was really going to call it myself) with a net result of +5 for us and -5 for them. Third hand I made another Tichu.

Jon/Nadine+, David/Gili

Later in the evening we returned to this. I don't remember the final scores, but I set David in yet another Tichu. My hands were pretty good all evening.

Pillars of the Earth

Jon 47, Nadine, Gili, David 40

Scores approximate, but I know that I beat David, the last placed player by 7 points, since if he had bought the craftsman that I told him to buy on the last round, he would have netted 8 more points and won the game. David was flush at 30 cash the entire game. I hovered around 10 to 15 as usual, but sank to 0 on the penultimate round. I was a few points ahead on the score track the entire game, however.

Which was weird, because a) I had my usual abysmal luck with the master craftsman, as usual, and so missed nearly every important selection on the board most rounds, and b) the most I was ever able to convert was 1 to 1, although I could do it by round 2 and could do it for every type of resource.

I have to admit that I finally got fed up with the master craftsman mechanic this game. It's just too brutal to lose by it (or win by it) so often for so many games. A mechanic that evens out over the course of a single game is one thing; one that only evens out over the course of many games is useless unless it's a game designed to be played many times in succession (such as Poker).

I like everything else about the game. I'm thinking of replacing the master craftsman mechanic with something like the initiative track from Year of the Dragon or with some kind of auction.

Nadine adds: Gili was ahead of me by one point so she was second, though she seemed better positioned the whole time. I agree with you about the mechanic.

No game night next week again, and the week after is Games Day.

September 01, 2010

2010-09-02T16:23:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili

Hmm. Hopefully participation will pick up, now that summer is over. On the other hand, the next few weeks will be an erratic schedule.

Mr Jack

Jon (Criminal)+, Gili (Detective)

First play for Gili. Gili was slow to differentiate the characters, but she discovered who Mr Jack was by turn 7 (purple). However, she couldn't manage to jump on him by the end of turn 8.

Gili (Criminal)+, Jon (Detective)

We switched sides. I eliminated four characters by the end of turn 1, and two more by the end of turn 2, but that's how it stayed until the end of the game. Turn 8 I guessed wrong.

Netrunner

Jon (Runner)+, Gili (Corp)

First play for Gili. This is still a great game. It's one problem is that too much can swing on a lucky pick (raid R&D and topdeck 3 points, when you only need 7 points to win the game).

After the game, I cataloged all of my cards and added them to my Netrunner entry on BGG. They're for trade or for sale, if anyone wants. I just don't think I'll get to play it much, here.

August 25, 2010

2010-08-26T20:26:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Elijah, Michael

Ah, the low attendance days of summer. Hopefully soon to be over. On the other hand, Michael (Elijah's father) was able to attend, when he usually can't.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Elijah 26, Michael 21, Jon 17

First play for Michael.

Kingdoms: Village, Smithy, Market, Secret Chamber, Swindler, Wishing Well, Baron, Bridge, Sea Hag, Outpost

For some reason, though I draw randomly from all 77 kingdoms, I have yet to pull more than 2 cards from Seaside for any game, and usually it's 1 card.

This game went slowly, and we ended by running out of three decks: Village, Market, and curses.

I thought that Village / Smithy / some Markets would do well, but, in fact, I rarely ever got to more than 4. I eventually got some Markets, but it was no use. Somehow, Elijah killed with Baron and Bridge, while even Michael outdid me with a Baron and an Outpost.

Elijah 34, Jon 30, Michael ??

Kingdoms: Bureaucrat, Market, Adventurer, Steward, Baron, Ironworks, Upgrade, Treasury, and two others.

I thought I had a good chance of winning this one, taking Steward to trash away everything but the silvers I got from Bureaucrat. After that, I trashed all my other cards, including my Ironworks which seemed to have no particular use. But I ended up with the same number of Provinces that Elijah had, while he still have his Estates. Treasure is a no-brainer over Market. I don't remember what Elijah took, however.

Antike

Jon 9, Elijah 8, Michael 6

First play for Michael. We played to one less than the recommended end point, as usual.

Michael made the mistake of building a temple too close to me, even after given fair warning. I sacked it, and he played catch-up the rest of the game. Elijah and I pretty much raced each other the rest of the game, but I was positioned for the clinching points quicker than he was.

August 18. 2010

2010-08-20T14:00:00.001+03:00

Participants: Gili, Elijah, Jon, David K, Avraham

Small game group, since it's August. Game night was at Gili's house.

Age of Empires III

Gili 96, Jon 95, David 95, Elijah 93, Avraham 60

Just one game took the entire evening, from around 7:40 until 11:20 or so. I'm pretty sure most other game groups finish games more quickly than we do. Yeah, we have some AP, but it doesn't seem like THAT much.

First play for Avraham and Elijah, second for David, third for Gili, and fourth for me.

The end scores are all pretty hazy. Several final or interim decisions might have changed them. Also, I tried to discover a province with four colonists twice, once in each of the last two turns, and failed both times. If either had succeeded (which was overwhelmingly in my favor) I would have won; then again, I could simply have waited until I had six colonists on the last round and try only once, with guaranteed success. So this was also the result of a choice, only I didn't know how many points I needed exactly to win.

If they don't do anything to change the board depending on the number of players, worker placement games are optimized for the maximum number of players. In our case, for five players. Though the game was long, it didn't drag much and was pretty interesting the whole way. Elijah, as well as the others, enjoyed the game.

Gili played with heavy soldiers, killing off other colonists here and there; I finally put a stop to her killing mine with some soldiers of my own and then the defensive building that gives you a soldier in every area whenever you're attacked. I don't often say this, but this game could actually use just a tad more conflict.

David had very strong income with tiles and ships, and also a lot of missionaries and the bonus for missionaries. I had strong income with tiles, too, and I took the first building first, which was the one that gives $20 so that you can then go and buy two more buildings; it's always the first one chosen, so it may be somewhat broken. I think it's less broken in five players, because you don't necessarily get to pick your next building already on the first round. Still, there is one that gives $5 per round which I don't think of as broken, so I don't know what the fix would be.

I also had a captain in the discovery box each round, and played for as many of those as I could. Elijah and Avraham also did several discoveries. Avraham neglected everything else, including income, which is why his score was so low. He had a merchant every round, however.

We discovered that we were playing one rule incorrectly: that an area only scores once there are at least three colonists in it. This prevents areas discovered right before a scoring from counting during the scoring. I don't know how I feel about this rule.

August 03, 2010

2010-08-04T10:08:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Gili child, Binyamin, Rivka, Zvi Yehuda, David K, Avraham

Game night was moved to Tuesday again, since I was expecting to be out of town on Wednesday evening. Being summer vacation, several attendees brought their young children with them. Also, as has happened a number of times in the last year or so, I didn't take any notes, so this report will be somewhat hazy.

Nile

Binyamin, Rivka, Zvi Yehuda, Gili, Jon

Nile is a new game from Minion Games. The publisher sent me a copy to review, which you can find soon on Purple Pawn.

In the first game, we forgot to mix in the used Flood cards with the discarded cards. Binyamin still insisted that we quit after the second run through the deck. He wasn't impressed with the lack of control or meaningful decisions.

The younger kids liked the game and wanted to play again.

David 2/3/3/3/3, Jon 1/2/2/3/4, Avraham 0/3/3/3/4

I thought the game might be less random with perhaps with more meaningful decisions in three player rather than five player. It was a bit better, but not especially. This time we played an entire game through. Turns became rather repetitive, and were not too engaging. Occasionally we had to make a semi-meaningful decision between two options. It's possible that we missed some strategies.

Actually, in retrospect, none of us tried a strategy of building up many cards before playing, which might work. Possibly I would try the game one more time to try that out.

But, as I said, the game is quite random, and wasn't too engaging, so I'm not sure I will. However, the younger kids still enjoyed it.

Tribune

Binyamin+, Rivka, Zvi Yehuda, Gili, Nadine

Binyamin won. They played an easy variant.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon+, David+

David and I drafted from an uninspiring set of cards. I ended up with solid White, no Blue, but an equal number of support from the other three colors. After assessing the worth of the colors, I ended up with White/Green and a splash of Red. My mana curve was terrible, as nearly everything I had cost 4 to cast. In the two games I played, I drew perfect mana distribution, but rarely ever saw a Green card.

David played Black/Red, and, as usual, his most annoying threat was a Black pump creature.

In the first game, I brought out solid white cards and eventually hit 8 mana. David was just too slow. In the second game, I didn't get to 8 mana and I spent a lot of time tossing little guys in the way of a big Black creature. Until I got out the Droning Bureaucrats. David's Black creature didn't allow him to attack with any other creature, so all of his other guys were useless. And my Bureaucrats canceled his Black creature every round, but at the expense of using up 5 mana each round. Which put us at a standstill for several rounds.

Finally, just to relieve the tedium, I disrupted the stalemate, but it ended up with me tossing out some more fodder, him killing his Black guy so he could attack with his other creatures, and him finally overrunning me.

Naturally, my very next pick would have allowed me to kill his last guy, and possibly come back. However, by that point, he also had more things to cast and we were only about 5 cards from the end of the deck, so I might just have decked myself in the end.

Steam

Binyamin, Rivka, Zvi Yehuda, Avraham

I taught this to all of them. Binyamin prefers Age of Steam or Railroad Tycoon, and wasn't impressed with this game, a decision he made before he even started playing. For whatever reason, they all stopped the game after two rounds.

R-Eco

David 18, Jon 17, Avraham -3

Although I usually enjoy this little game - one of the better filler games - I found this session even better than usual. At several points I felt like there were some tough and important choices to make, and that I had some control over the results. This is largely due to it being a three player, rather than a five player, game.

We play with the chips all randomized and in random piles, so you never know what color or number will come up next on a pile. I chose to dump early in order to collect a few early high valued chips. David caught up fairly quickly, however. In the end, we both had dumped the same amount, but, because he was the one to end the game, he had a point more than me in chips. If it had made it to my turn, I would have taken the chip and won, instead.

Race for the Galaxy

Binyamin+, Rivka, Zvi Yehuda

Binyamin at least had played this before, though he asked a number of rules questions to me during the game. He won, of course.

July 27, 2010

2010-07-28T11:14:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Miriam, Nadine

Game night was moved to Tuesday night at 7:30 owing to a conflict. And it's summer, so attendance is bound to be down.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

Jon 25, Gili 21, Miriam 18

My estimation of this game shrank a little, though I still enjoyed it. I really don't like game mechanics that put person A in a position of deciding to give a bonus to either persons B or C, where person A doesn't even get anything for doing so. Ugh.

I would say that this is what happens in this game with three players, but the truth is that it happened with four players, too. Maybe the game only shines with five players? Being both an election and an area control game, this is probable.

One other thing to note about this game is that, like Greed Incorporated, how you actually get victory points seems non-intuitive. It's not holding the electoral seats, but gaining the electoral seats that gives you points. Which means, it's best to lose control and regain an area every round, rather than simply keep it. Which makes little sense.

Otherwise, victory points are sparse and hidden within all of the other mechanics of the game. That's not necessarily bad, but it is, as I said, non-intuitive.

In our game, I did well in the beginning and then slid a little as the game went on. It appears that it is better to do better in the beginning of the game, rather than at the end, as it is worth slightly more points. Also a rather odd feature in a game.

Tichu

Jon/Gili 60, Nadine/Miriam 40

Miriam had time for one hand. They had nearly all of the good cards: Nadine had a bomb of queens, and Miriam had a full house of aces over kings, as well as the phoenix. Miriam went out first, but Nadine found herself left with a 9 and the Dog, which was not ideal.

Oltre Mare

Jon 107, Nadine 90something, Gili 70something

Nadine asked to try this again, and then complained at the beginning that it was too complicated, and then admitted at the end that it was good but too complicated. She is not good at games where a single choice of cards determines a number of different consequences; on the other hand, that's also the story with El Grande, at which she generally wins. So I don't know.

I don't like the trading mechanic, where other players get a bonus for trading on your turn. First of all, it's another kingmaker mechanic. Second, it discourages people from trading on their own turn.

I also didn't like the end mechanic, where one player ends the game and the game continues until all players have had an equal number of turns. I don't like it because many times you plan on one turn for the next turn, and it is not fair for some people to know that the game has ended when they take their last turn, while others don't. To solve this, I had the game go around one more time after the game ending condition. This worked very well.

In our game, we all started off in close proximity on the board, which was a little unfair for Gili who was in the middle. Nadine was getting points from playing only one card a turn but having the "X-3" chip, which is not ultimately as powerful as simply playing more cards each turn. All of the chips are worth about 2-3 points, but the gold symbol one is the most reliable.

I'm still not decided on the idea of buying cards. Obviously you have to buy or get cards when you are required to play a certain number. But how often do they return their purchase cost, I wonder?

Still an interesting game.

July 21, 2010

2010-07-23T09:55:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Elijah, Gili, Abraham, Sara, Miriam, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda

Binyamin returns after a long absence, with his son Zvi Yehuda. Abraham, Sara, and Miriam will be leaving soon.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Jon 39*, Elijah 32, Nadine 31

Kingdoms: Woodcutter, Remodel, Thief, Council Room, Mine, Adventurer, Coppersmith, Upgrade, Lighthouse, and something else.

I didn't read the Lighthouse carefully enough. As a result, a few times I played it as if I also gained an extra action at the beginning of my next turn. So my score is in doubt.

I played a heavy trashing games, often upgrading 5 cost cards to 6 cost cards, and then remodeling them into provinces. Nadine played fairly straightforward, but both she and Elijah took thieves, which, due to lighthouses, were fairly ineffective.

Gili arrived shortly after we started playing, but I made her wait. I should have restarted, I suppose.

El Grande

Nadine 109, Gili 108, Sara 108, Elijah 90, Abraham 88

Nadine usually sweeps this game with no trouble, so the surprise is how close it was. After the first scoring she was ahead 55 to 47, and after the second 92 to 84.

Homesteaders

Binyamin 75, Jon 73, Miriam 53, Zvi Yehuda 37

First plays for Miriam and Zvi Yehuda, and second or third for Binyamin. I think this may have been my first four player game.

Still a fantastic game. Of course, you need to know about the final buildings in order to plan for them throughout the game. Balancing the need for trade chips without getting drowned by them is possibly the biggest challenge. Far better to be drowned by them than not have enough, however.

I thought I was winning, so it surprised me that Binyamin won in the end. On the other hand, he got both of the two best mid-game buildings, so maybe it shouldn't have surprised me so much. Bidding went high in the last two rounds; I passed on round 9, and Binyamin passed on round 10.

Miriam misbid on round 10 and we didn't let her take it back after Binyamin had already made a different bid as a result. Then we let Zvi Yehuda take something back from the previous turn, which wasn't exactly fair. However, Zvi Yehuda is a young boy, and he was losing by a mile, anyway. In the end, Binyamin moved to outbid Zvi Yehuda, and Zvi Yehuda moved to outbid Miriam, so Miriam got to redo her bid, anyway.

July 14, 2010

2010-07-16T12:01:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Elijah, Nadine, Max, Sergei, Alona, Miriam, Eitan, Emily

Being the nine days, I wasn't sure if anyone would come. Gili was probably recovering from the bat mitzva of her daughter. Also, I sadly must report that Abraham and Sara will be leaving Jerusalem soon, and also that Miriam is going back to the states in a week or two.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Nadine 41, Elijah 37, Jon 33

Kingdoms: Chapel, Throne Room, Gardens, Laboratory, Baron, Conspirator, Torturer, Upgrade, Harem, Tactician

This looked like a nice set, and I should have done fine. Unfortunately, I had the worst luck ever known to man with my card drawing. I bought an early Chapel and did not once get it together in my hand with an Estate. Not once. (In retrospect, I should have just trashed the four coppers, rather than trash one and buy a Silver.)

I bought Throne Room and only twice pulled it together with another action card, and that was Torturer, both time near the end of the game. It was a freaking nightmare. I really wanted to play the same set again, but other people came in the meanwhile.

Nadine avoided most of the kingdoms, bought Silvers and Harems, and did just fine.

Eitan 42, Emily 38

They played this when they came late and waited for others to finish longer games.

Antike

Jon 8, Elijah 6, Max, Sergei

First plays for Max and Sergei. I warned them several times to keep track of points and go for them, rather than mess around with armies and battles, but in vain. Still, they really liked the game. I started with marble, while all the other guys started with iron. I also had a slight advantage in starting off in the corner (Phoneticians), though all the other players moved in my direction and boxed me in.

Princes of Florence

Nadine+, Miriam, Alona

First play for Alona, and possibly for Miriam as well. No surprise that Nadine won, but she says the game was close.

Tigris and Euphrates

Jon 5/5/5/9, Eitan 5/5/5/7, Elijah 4/5, Emily 2

Another game I don't get to play often enough. First play for Eitan and Emily, and a reminder to Elijah who had played once. I set up a few monuments mid-game, giving dozens of green points to Elijah and blue and black points to me. I didn't care about the green points, because I knew Elijah had plenty of them already, anyway.

I won mostly because I ended the game on my turn.

Cuba

Max, Sergei, Alona, Nadine, Miriam

First plays for everyone but Nadine. Unfortunately, the game went slowly and it was late, so I had to kick them out after round 3.

July 07, 2010

2010-07-08T17:35:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Miriam, Abraham, Tal

Light night. Gili is planning for her daughter's bat mitzvah.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Jon 48, Nadine 44

Nadine may actually have had 45; she forgot to count her cards for Gardens.

Kingdoms: Village, Woodcutter, Feast, Gardens, Council Room, Secret Chamber, Scout, Trading Post, Duke, Ghost Ship

Two VP cards makes Scout an interesting buy. One Trading Post, one Council Room, one Woodcutter, two Villages, and Feasts completed my deck. Nadine doesn't play trashing cards, so she skipped the Trading Post in favor of more Council Rooms; she also didn't get Scouts. I'm surprised she did as well as she did.

Endeavor

Nadine 53, Miriam 49, Jon 47, Abraham 43

First plays for Miriam and Abraham. Nadine and I had played this before and had not been impressed; not bad, but not quite gelled, we thought. After this play, we both felt a but better about it, but still think there are too many positive and negative ideas to juggle on each turn, for not enough reward. I would compare it unfavorably to Oltre Mare, which has the same juggling idea with less variables.

Abraham started out strong, but lost tempo mid-game. I started off weak without the brick building, since bricks were in short supply and it then took me some time to be able to afford a building of level 3. Nadine was actually the only one to buy a level 5 building, though Abraham also got to that level at one point, while Miriam reached it on the last round (which gave her points, at least).

I sat in front of Miriam, and consequently she felt that I was purposely acting to thwart her the whole game, to the point that she actually got frustrated. On her last play she deliberately thwarted me to prevent me from getting three points while getting two for herself. It took some time to convince her that, in fact, she had a better play elsewhere that netted her 5 or 6 additional points, and I could get 2 points elsewhere, so I would only end up losing 1, anyway. Reluctantly, she changed her play, and ended up beating me with those few points. I think that ameliorated her.

Meanwhile, I sat behind Abraham and felt that he was thwarting me the whole game, but I took it in stride.

Yinsh

Abraham+, Miriam

I reminded Abraham how to play, and Miriam tried it for the first time. However, she doesn't really like abstracts, so I guess she won't play it again. Abraham removed two disks, and then Miriam took off two. The last one went back and forth until Abraham found a subtle forking play.

Tichu

Jon/Tal 455, Abraham/Miriam 145

We played four hands. In the second one, Miriam and I both called Tichu, when Tal was planning on calling it originally. I managed to go out first with the Dog, and then Tal went out. The score was 370 to -70. On the last round, Abraham bid and made Tichu, while Miriam struggled not to go out first. Tal was able to go out after her, and then I went out. Miriam's last cards were a pair of 5s.

June 30, 2010

2010-07-01T16:32:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, Elijah, Maxim, Sergey, Alona, Miriam

Maxim and Sergey return after a long absence due to conflicts, and they brought Alona with them. I guess Alona has played games with them before.

Game night was very chaotic, partly because everyone was trying to learn new games all at once, and partly because Nadine was trying to both teach one game and learn another at the same time, something which I should have stopped much earlier.

Oltre Mare

Elijah+, Nadine, Gili, Jon

We picked this to learn. I had never even read the rules, but it was simple enough to read them out loud and go through a sample turn.

OM is an expanded version of Bohnanza; that's all I could think the whole way through the game. They're not really identical in mechanics, but trading away cards you don't want to get what you do, and then planting them in sequenced groups, is the core of both games, and so it naturally leads to that conclusion.

Oltre Mare has more to it. Each round, you have to play a certain number of cards and gain the value of these cards. It's just that each time you play, you determine not only this turn's results, but the points you get based on the order you discard them, what you played last time, and will play next time, as well as your hand limit at the beginning of your next turn and the exact number of cards you are required to play next turn. Since the cards are designed to ensure that you can't generally get the best of all worlds on each play, you simply have to decide where to compromise each round. This is not that big of a deal, because, owing to the trading that happens on every players' turn, you can often make up for the compromise by the time it gets back to you again.

I thought it was a lovely game, with a few caveats. One is the mechanic that gives you a trade chip each time you trade with someone else on their turn. The player with the most trade chips at the middle and end of the games gains 6 points. Since this is entirely dependent on other players' whims, I dislike it. It's an unnecessary mechanic, anyway, since you already have incentives for trading. It's not too much of a deal, however.

What's bad is the trade rules. Each card has a "type", as well as symbols that indicate the types of actions you get when you play the cards, and the hand limit and number of cards you must play if the card ends up on top of your played stack. And the rules clearly say that you must tell the other players what types of cards you are trading them but may LIE about the other symbols.

As a Eurogamer, that mechanics simply turns me off, entirely. Some people may like it, war gamers mostly, and that's fine for them. In our game, we simply didn't bother to mention anything else on the card, trading entirely by card type.

One additional mechanic which I really dislike is the same one which annoyed me in a few other games, and it's the combination of a) a variable game ending trigger, and b) that the player to the right of the starting player always gets the last turn. This mechanic entirely screws the player who goes first, who typically has no control over when the game will end and is therefore typically caught entirely sunk after he has invested resources for his next turn, only to suddenly find that he has no next turn. Which is exactly what happened to me in this game, but I will point out that I objected to the mechanic already when the game started, entirely for this reason.

Other than these issues, the rest of the game is simple and should, in theory, be relatively quick. Our game wasn't, because of the chaos I mentioned above. And, strangely, Nadine came close to winning, despite not really paying attention and having an 11 card run in her stack of which she could use only 5. I didn't pay close enough attention to the final scores and how they came about to see how that happened.

Nadine writes: I thought the ships and ship tokens would be more relevant than they were, and they're about equal including the pirate blocker. It's different from other games, you're actions are very constrained so you have to plan within that which is hard. I was sure I had started off with 3 torahs, but I guess I hadn't. Even with the other game, I could have remembered that if I had concentrated.

Tribune

Sergey+, Maxim, Alona, Miriam

Nadine taught this to Sergey, Maxim, and Alona, and continued to teach them throughout their game. Miriam had played twice before, but she was still somewhat shaky on the rules. I think they all basically enjoyed it.

Nadine writes: Near the end I noticed that the money was an obligatory condition, but I said they could decide to play without it, I think it hurt Miriam but I'm not sure.

Tichu

Elijah/Gili 95, Jon/Nadine 5

We played one hand of this, and both Elijah and Gili were the less experienced players, as you can tell from our final scores.

Pillars of the Earth

Jon 45, Miriam, Maxim

Unfortunately, the people who played this game last time had not separated the expansion cards from the main set, and there are no distinguishing marks or reference sheets that enables one to distinguish between the original cards and those of the expansion. I made a reasonable guess for nearly all the cards, excepting one of two character cards, one of which showed up during play and I didn't understand its special ability at the time. We managed to muddle through.

First play for each of them. I taught them very straightforward and they picked it up nearly immediately, with only some confusion as to the difference between placing the workers and placing the master builders. I also showed them the later craftsman cards early on so they would have an idea what to look for as the game went on.

They both enjoyed the game. Maxim had been hoping to try Stone Age as an alternative to Caylus which he thinks is too long (as do I), but I was glad to play this instead (Gili owns Stone Age, but she didn't bring it).

Notre Dame

Nadine 53, Sergey 46, Gili 46, Alona 45, Elijah 35

Nadine writes: Only Gili and I had played before. Sergey started out strong with a lot of points from cars, and money but then couldn't keep it up. After two rounds the scores were close, 28 and 29 for 4, 25 for 1 person.

June 23, 2010

2010-06-24T11:54:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Adam, Shira, Nadine, Gili, Elijah, Miriam, Abraham, Eitan

Welcome to Shira for her first visit. Shira lives in walking distance and has previous Eurogame experience, and so is a welcome addition. Hopefully she will return. Adam also doesn't usually come anymore, since he works on Wed evenings, but he was able to make it for a one-off.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Shira (B)+, Adam (W)

Adam taught this to Shira, who picked it up quickly enough to win.

Fairy Tale

Nadine 46, Jon 42, Gili 37, Elijah 22

We hadn't played this in a while, and we needed something light for three players. Elijah walked in as I was dealing, so he joined, though he doesn't particularly like the game.

I thought I had kind of figured out some strategy for the game, but Nadine won anyway. She claimed that she played randomly, but I kind of doubt that. She just likes to say that when she wins.

Louis XIV

Abraham 42, Shira 39, Gili 38, Nadine 35

First play for Shira, and possibly first or second for Abraham. This is an otherwise decent game where I don't particularly like the scoring system.

Cosmic Encounter

Elijah+, Jon, Miriam, Adam

Elijah always begs to play this, and I and Adam were willing, so I brought it out. First play for Miriam, whom we taught. First time teachings of this game in our house can result in disaster when the fanatics insist on adding multiple hidden powers, half the flare deck, weird destiny pile cards, and other such nonsense. I prefer to have the first game be quite limited: single revealed powers, 20 flares + the power flares, and that's it. Edicts, Kickers, Reinforcements, and the rest of the exceptional card is quite enough for a first time play.

As a result, the game went fairly straightforward (nobody drew the wild Schizoid flare that was in the deck). I played Symbiote, Miriam played Grief, Adam played Will, and Elijah played Visionary.

Steam

Miriam 36+, Jon 36, Adam 34, Elijah 28, Eitan 24

First plays for Adam and Miriam. Another great game I don't get to play often enough. It's typically a long game, but the length usually occurs during the track laying and cube moving phases. For some reason, people took a really, really long time to figure out their role selection. As a result, the game took about three hours.

Adam and Eitan commented that a five player game is more brutal, with much undercutting of track space and stealing cubes, apparently more so than with three or four players.

In our games, we all crowded around the Connecticut coastal area before branching west. Adam and Elijah began building in the Canada area extending south, while I just continued north and central through Mass/NY.

I was the first to start churning out victory points. Miriam went to 10 income which I though was kind of a waste, but somehow she had a nice central route and just managed to match my score at the very end, whereupon she won on the tie. Adam was frustrated at one point that train power could not exceed 6, as he had a few 7 link routes he wanted to run.

In the end, we all had about 9 links.

San Juan

Abraham 35, Gili 31, Nadine 30

They played this to wrap up while we finished Steam.

June 16, 2010

2010-06-17T17:51:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, Elijah, Miriam

Welcome back to Elijah, who looked distinctly taller than the last time we'd seen him.

It's Alive

Jon 57, Gili 45, Nadine 37, Elijah 32

Gili asked to play this as a filler. I've played this hundreds of times, but there are still surprises for me in each game. In this game, I started picking up a lot of cash and then buying tiles only when the slab value equaled twice my cash value. That was my way of maximizing my points, while simultaneously keeping flexibility. My only concern is if someone else were hurrying the game along, in which case I might end up with too much cash and not enough points.

It didn't hurt that I didn't get any Villagers. But it wouldn't have made much of a difference if I had, I think. Gili's 45 include the 5 point bonus for ending the game.

Tribune

Nadine+, Elijah, Gili, Jon, Miriam

First play for Elijah, second for Miriam. Five players is a tough game with fewer opportunities to make progress each round. It's more important to have a plan, and not just pick up whatever randomly comes your way, which is what I did. It's probably what Nadine did, too, but what came her way was better than what came my way.

Mu

Elijah 88, Gili 80, Jon 63, Miriam 44, Nadine 15*

With five players looking for a light game, I finally had my chance to try Mu, a highly-rated trick taking game for 4-6 players. The game has a table for the points required to make for your bid, and a separate table for bonus points for making your bid, and a number of interesting bidding and trump rules in between.

It's fun and interesting, but it's not really all that great. In fact, it's far better with four players than it is with five, which kind of defeats the point, since there are already so many good (better) card games for four. From my limited experience of three hands, it's biggest drawback is that, unlike many other cards games, you're simply going to do well if you have a good hand and poorly if you have a bad hand. Which is not the case for Bridge, Tichu, David and Goliath, and many other games.

Nevertheless, all of us except for Nadine enjoyed ourselves well enough. Nadine gave it two hands and then bowed out for the third. Elijah racked up a lot of points in the first two games, and neither chief was able to make his bid. In the third hand, played without Nadine, Gili was chief and took nearly all the tricks.

Vegas Showdown

Jon 51, Gili 46, Miriam 44, Elijah 44, Nadine

First play for Elijah and Miriam. Elijah was falling asleep near the end of the game, but it was Nadine who caused the biggest disruption when it turned out that she had placed and benefited for several rounds from a building for which she didn't have the correct prerequisites. Miriam also had done it, but it was her first game and she did it after Nadine, so she had an excuse.

Nadine had to remove the building near the end, and never got the correct prerequisite building to re-place it, while Miriam did. Gili jumped ahead in the last round or two in both people and income, when I had been leading in them throughout the game. Which annoyed me. Somehow I still won. I think because I had a lot of good early income, and took some bonus points for Slots (and event) and cashing money in for points (twice during events).

June 09, 2010

2010-06-10T00:47:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Miriam, Ksenia, Gili, Nadine, Abraham, Emily, Eitan, Rachel

Emily and Eitan make it back after a few weeks absence. Miriam was here for her third week; she's a natural gamer.

Dominion / Dominion Intrigue / Dominion Seaside

Ksenia 25, Jon 24, Gili 21, Miriam 21

Kingdoms: Chapel, Moat, Moneylender, Gardens, Adventurer, Steward, Coppersmith, Ironworks, Bazaar, Tactician

Lots of trashing doesn't mix well with Gardens, but Ironworks does. And one would take Moneylender or Coppersmith, not both. First time playing with Steward, and I noticed that you have to trash exactly two cards, not "up to two". First time playing with Tactician, which is as powerful as it looks, but it was still hard to choose between it and Bazaar.

First play for Miriam. It was a mistake to play with Steward and Ironworks, both of which require a choice between three actions, which makes it difficult to understand, let alone make the decision, on your first play. Tip: when introducing new players, don't play with complicated cards.

I thought it was a close, quick game, and it was.

Homesteaders

Abraham 53, Nadine 52, Gili 43

Abraham loves this game, like I do. Nadine wasn't sure after her first play, so she played again to see if she liked it better the second time. She said that she likes it enough to play it again, but it's not in her top tier with Puerto Rico or El Grande.

At the end scoring, they thought that they were tied, until they remembered that Nadine had to subtract 1 point for her debt.

Power Grid

Jon 15+, Miriam 15, Ksenia 15

First plays for both Miriam and Ksenia. I explained the market mechanics as we played, but only mentioned once, and early, about ties being decided by money. As a result, when the end of the game came down to money, Miriam hadn't prepared properly for it. Furthermore, it was fortunate that I was able to end the game the round that I did, because both Ksenia and Miriam were set to gain a lot more than I was on the next round: I was two cities up on them, bit still needed more capacity, while they both had 17 capacity already.

The reason for this was because, in our game, fuel, especially coal, was running out each round. And so, at the end of the game, in order to ensure that I had fuel, I had to dump a 5 plant powered by coal for a 5 plant powered by oil, and so couldn't move up in production capacity to any of the 6 or 7 plants (which were all coal).

I thought Ksenia wasn't handling the mid-game plants well, but somehow she ended up essentially tied with us by the end of the game, anyway.

Mr Jack

Emily++, Eitan

Emily and Eitan end up playing with each other often, as they tend to arrive late and while we're in the middle of other games.

Emily won two games against Eitan. In the first, she was Criminal and escaped in round 4. In the second, she was Detective and jumped on Mr Jack on turn 7.

Tichu

Nadine/Abraham 140, Jon/Miriam 60

We only had time for one hand while Eitan and Emily finished their second game of Mr Jack. Nadine went out of character and called and made Tichu. Miriam also considered calling it; luckily she didn't. She ended up going out last. I went out second.

Sticheln

Jon 27, Abraham 26, Eitan 14, Emily 4

First play for everyone except me, and I had previously only played one half of a hand. I had to look up the rules (on BGG, since I have the German edition) to remember how to play.

We played four hands, and we all played better with each hand. There are a number of things going on in the game. Still, I'm unconvinced that there is any strategy in the game; it seems to be nearly all tactics. Perhaps more plays will reveal more of the strategy.

Hand 1: Abraham 8, Jon 4, Emily -13, Eitan -17
Hand 2: Jon 6, Abraham 2, Eitan -2, Emily -2
Hand 3: Eitan 12, Jon 8, Emily 5, Abraham 4
Hand 4: Emily 14, Eitan 13, Abraham 12, Jon 9

Puerto Rico

Rachel 56, Nadine 51, Ksenia 47, Miriam 40

First plays for Miriam and Ksenia. Rachel had a full Guild Hall, Factory, and Small Market. Nadine had four corns, Factory, Wharf, and Customs House. Which kind of made whatever Miriam and Ksenia had irrelevant. Actually, Ksenia was pretty close (hmmmm... this is not the first time I've underestimated her score during a game).

June 02, 2010

2010-06-03T01:02:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Abraham, Miriam

Some participants were off to a play, and others promised to show up and didn't *ahem*. Miriam returned for her second visit. Yay, Miriam!

Dominion

Jon 30, Abraham 26

Gardens 4, Laboratory 5, Library 5, Market 5, Courtyard 2, Conspirator 4, Torturer 5, Ambassador 3, Navigator 4, Bazaar 5.

I thought the simplest strategy was Bazaar / Conspirator. So that's what I did. Each of us also picked up an Ambassador and proceeded to trade coppers and estates. He decided to ignore the Conspirators and take instead Navigator. We split the provinces, but I also had two Gardens at the end.

Abraham 34, Jon 27

Woodcutter, Workshop, Throne Room, Conspirator, Torturer, Moneylender 4, Sea Hag, Outpost, Treasury, Wishing Well

Abraham emptied out the Treasuries, while I got two, and some Throne Rooms and Conspirators. I used Moneylender and Woodcutter to get some early provinces, but he used Sea Hag to clog up my deck with 6 curses, and I had no way of cycling past them. Again we split the provinces.

Dvonn

Jon+, Abraham+

I won the first game by a large margin. In the second game, I thought I was doing well. I lopped off half the board leaving me 11 pieces and him 10. However, I think I made a mistake somewhere, and he won by 1 disk.

Torres

Abraham 210, Jon 203, Miriam 182

First play for both Abraham and Miriam. I have the German edition, so though I explained the cards to them and there are symbols on the card, the symbols are not unambiguous, and so they needed to ask me what the cards were during play. Or, failed to ask me, and misunderstood what they had drawn.

The game was incredibly tight after the first phase, with Miriam one point ahead of me, who was one point ahead of Abraham (Miriam's point was from jumping over both of us). At the end of the second phase, I was at 111, Abraham at 104 or so, and Miriam at 100. We each had our little castles, and shared control of the king's castle.

Miriam then moved the king to a small castle on one side of the board, and started working on it. Unfortunately, I built the last free space and jumped onto it, which made it impossible for anyone to build past the second level, and so no one got the king's bonus in the final phase.

I was just barely ahead of Abraham, but he played the jump two levels as his final card, after everyone else had played. Which gave him the game.

Settlers of Catan

Miriam 10, Jon 5, Abraham 5

Miriam had only played two-player. We needed something quick, and while we could have played a filler, this also fit the bill.

I placed first, and made a mistake when placing my second settlement. I decided to go ahead what I knew to be true: math. My first settlement was on 8/10/5. Instead of placing my second settlement on a 9/10/5 (which gave me all the resources, and had good values, but limited me to very specific dice rolls) I placed on 9/4/11, which also gave me all the resources, diverse numbers, but worse math. I should have stuck to what I knew to be correct.

After all, not only is it better math, but concentrating on certain numbers is actually a better strategy, since the dice roll screwy, anyway. If they roll screwy your way, you win. If they don't you lose. But if you choose an assortment of mediocre middle, one of the other players will be benefiting from the screwy numbers more than you will be.

Anyhoo, Miriam lead off by blocking off one of my road, and then wrapping around and blocking the settlement in the other direction, as well. Then she hosed by 8 ore, which rolled about 5,000 times while the robber was on it. Abraham lost a few bricks from the short time that the robber was on his 6. And Miriam escaped nearly all injury, took an early Longest Road, and sailed to an easy victory.

May 26, 2010

2010-05-27T00:50:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, David, Gili, Nadine, Miriam, Abraham

Miriam is a new visitor, and new to modern gaming. But she's sharp and so picked up the games pretty quickly. She said she'd return, and I hope she does.

David came early.

Magic: The Gathering

Jon++, David

So of course, we drafted, still using the cards I picked up more than a year and a half ago. They're still new to us. Unusually, I felt like I was doing poorly in the drafting; usually I feel like I'm doing ok, and then I lose. Around a third of the way through this draft, I decided to start paying attention to the creatures that boost other creatures of the same type, something that only works in the modern expansions; but our draft was from mostly modern expansions.

I ended up with a deck of nothing but Elves, Giants, and Goblins, as well as a few utility cards. I had an Elf that brought another Elf to the top of my deck when it came into play (and the same for a Giant), an Elf that replaced any dead Elf card with an Elf token, an Elf instant that gave me an Elf token for each Elf I had, and a few others. Also, an enchantment that could be moved to another creature of the same type when the enchanted creature died.

In our first game, I had 17 land, mostly green with even amounts of red and black (7/5/5). I ended up with too much land, and, even though I kept dragging things out of the graveyard, too much land slowed me down enough for him to overrun me. I tossed out two lands (G and R; none of my R's were double), and proceeded to win the next two games, though they were close. While a synergistic deck can be disrupted, it has to be thoroughly disrupted. Fun games.

Homesteaders

David 80, Jon 71

Second play for David, and he had to re-learn the game. The first time he played he was overwhelmed. He was still overwhelmed in this game, but in a good way.

I have to say that I'm really, really liking Homesteaders. Unlike nearly every other game I've played, it has a tremendous re-playability value. There are just so many avenues to explore packed into those ten rounds. I've played five times now, and I'm nowhere near knowing what I'm doing. And yet, it's clear that one can eventually learn to know something about what one is doing. Kudos to Alex for making a game that may actually rival Puerto Rico. What's amazing about Puerto Rico, however, is that PR does it without auctions.

In our game, I racked up some debt, but I never produced any strong goods, such as copper, cattle, or gold. David had some nice gold and trade chips going, which netted him the late game win. He stole 5 points from me by taking the last building that could really have helped me, and as you see, a 5 point swing would have done it.

Jon 56, Abraham 53, David 51

We played this again later in the evening. Second play for Abraham, who also really likes the game. David now officially likes the game, too. This time, in addition to the more competitive auctioning, I managed to get the trade chip/gold thing going, which just squeaked out a victory for me. The building that let me substitute gold for cattle or copper also helped a lot.

Abraham scuttled a late building bid by David, which apparently hurt both of them.

Dominion

David 34, Jon 33, Gili 25

We played with Cellar, Chapel, Workshop, Feast, Spy, Laboratory, Torturer, Salvager, Outpost, and Envoy. We mostly played with Cellar, Spy, Laboratory, and Salvager, though I made effective use of Chapel, dumping my three Estates and a Copper on turn four. They each started with a Silver instead of a Chapel. I don't know why I lost, actually.

It's Alive

Miriam+, Nadine

Nadine taught this to Miriam. They played the basic game very quickly, and Miriam won by one card. She didn't really like the game. Oh, well.

Tribune

Gili+, Nadine, Miriam

First play for Miriam, who started off strong but fell behind as the game progressed. Still, she liked the game.

Parade

David 20, Abraham 27, Jon 46

David did in this game what Abraham did the previous time he played, which was manage to avoid taking nearly anything for most of the game. Still a cute filler game.

Tichu

Jon-David/Miriam 1080, Nadine-Abraham 720

David and I started off behind, down a few hundred points. Abraham bid and made a number of Tichus. Then David had to go.

Miriam took over for him, and this was her first play. She played well. I bid and made a Tichu or two, including in one hand, when both Abraham and I bid Tichu, and I made it, putting us in the lead, finally (we went from 480/620 to 650/550. Then we were both tied at 700.

The penultimate game gave us 80 points. And then I bid and made Tichu, and Miriam and I both went out first, which gave us the game.

May 20, 2010

2010-05-21T02:08:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Abraham, Nadine, Ksenia

Regular game night was pre-empted by Motzai Shavuot, and I put out a call if anyone wanted to play a mini-games night on a Thursday. Abraham was the only responder. However, Nadine joined a little later, and then we rope Ksenia in.

Summoner Wars

Jon+, Abraham

First play for me. I played Orcs, Abraham played Elves.

Summoner Wars is one of a number of recent grid based fantasy combat card games. I guess some people just can't help but want to try to turn the random draw of a card game into something more akin to a war game. I haven't been too impressed with attempts I've experienced until now. They tend to be slow and cumbersome games.

Worse yet, Summoner wars uses dice-based combat resolution, which I generally abhor; that, at least, I recognize as personal taste. Its inclusion is not an objective detraction from the game.

My verdict from my one play is that this is the best of the lot. While I still don't enjoy dice-based combat, those who don't mind it will find this game at least not cumbersome. It plays quickly, with ample room for both strategy and tactics, although the strategy might be gone after the first few rounds.

Essentially: you start with some guys on the board, each of whom rolls a number of dice. Each die roll above a 2 is a hit for one point of damage. Each guy takes some number of hits to kill. The object is to kill the opponent's Boss. You draw up to five cards each round, and can summon more guys using your stash of mana. You gain mana by tossing cards into your mana stash at the end of the round, or by killing opponent's guys. You also have a number of instant spells which don't cost anything (other than not throwing the card out into your mana pile).

Move around, attack, move around, attack, etc.

I played aggressively, which is what usually gets me killed in war and CC games. However, as this was a quick game, it worked quite well here. It may not always work quite as well in this game, but it should always work well enough to be a decent strategy.

Homesteaders

Jon 61, Abraham 43

First play for Abraham. It might have been my first two-player game of this.

While a very tightly-controlled game flow, and oh so obviously from the mind of a Puerto Rico fanatic, I really like this game. A lot. I hope to play it many more times. I think Abraham liked it, as well, though maybe not as much as I do.

Dungeon Lords

Abraham, Jon, Nadine, Ksenia

First play for all of us except Abraham. Dungeon Lords is a vast and sprawling epic of a game, which to me left me with the same uneasy feeling I had after playing Caylus: about 20% too much work for the game. There is both a whole lot more calculating than there should be, and then too many times when you're just turning the cards over to see what comes next without anything to do.

That said, it's a very interesting and potentially fun game. FWIW, Nadine and Ksenia both thought it was much better than Caylus and thoroughly enjoyed it, without my reservations.

It has so many mechanics and moving parts, but they think that they fit together so nicely that it's not a problem. I'm just kind of overwhelmed. We played for 3 hours, and almost half of that time was explaining the game play. The other half allowed us to make it through one year, which is half of the game, after which we called it quits for the night. Abraham was slightly ahead, despite having almost no defenses in his dungeon. I think I would have been ahead if I hadn't overlooked that I was a gold short for taxes (worth -3 points).

I suspect you will be reading more reports here on the game, soon.

May 12, 2010

2010-05-13T23:34:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ksenia, Abraham, Sara, David, Gili, Eitan, Emily

Ksenia was able to join us again, for once. I think she was inspired after having won In the Shadow of the Emperor on shabbat. Also nice to see Sara coming more regularly.

Dominion/Intrigue/Seaside

Jon 51, Ksenia 41, Nadine 32

Scores approximate. First play of Dominion for Ksenia. Both Nadine and Ksenia started on VPs a tad too early, imho. We played with the Seaside Village that give +3 actions and +2 gold which is incredibly under-priced at a measly 3 cost. Tack on some card drawing cards (such as Nobles) and the play was pretty straightforward. Ksenia also took a Sea Hag, who was a minor annoyance since there were no cards that trashed other cards.

Dvonn

Abraham+, Sara

This may have been Sara's first play. Abraham won by a good margin.

Trias

Jon 31, Sara 30, Abraham 27

First plays for Abraham and Sara. Trias is one of those games that I love to pieces but don't get to play much because the older regulars in the group don't like it that much. Luckily, Abraham and Sara and Eitan and Emily are relative newcomers and so I can inflict these games on them at least once.

Also, Abraham is closer to my own feelings regarding which games he likes, and so he tends to like the games I like. He's willing to play Santiago, for instance.

Abraham and Sara both loved Trias, so I'm thrilled. It didn't take them long to get the hang of the basics, so most of the game was spent on tactics. Abraham managed to leach hex after hex away from other islands onto one on which he was alone, and the end scores were close. But he wasn't quite diverse enough, and I managed to end with control of a 12 hex island, which just edged me into first place.

Cuba

Nadine 80, Emily 79, Ksenia 67

First plays for Ksenia and Emily. Nadine started teaching a different group of people, but people showed up during the explanation, thought of joining and then some of them split off to start another game. I only played Cuba twice, and while I like it, I find the horizontal/vertical building activation mechanic on the players' boards annoying.

In this game, according to Nadine's notes: Nadine changed sugar into rum and shipped, Emily got money and had both shipping and building, and Ksenia had a blue stone and changed to VPs, but didn't do it every turn.

Taj Mahal

David 53, Gili 53, Eitan 44

This was formed from the overflow of Cuba. First play for Eitan. A tie for David and Gili.

Reef Encounter

Abraham 38, Jon 31, Sara 24

Sara's score is approximate. First play for me.

Some have compared Reef Encounter to Tigris and Euphrates or Go. Tom Vasel even claimed that once you have Reef Encounter, you can trade away T&E. While I've only played one game, so far it appears that nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing that RE and T&E share are the player screens and the tiles.

It's certainly a pretty and colorful game, and the theme is fresh and interesting. It's a good game, with quite a lot of depth to be explored. I enjoyed it fine, and will play again. But it's no T&E.

Not simply because it wasn't as good as T&E, which it wasn't. But because the strategies and tactics are so different from each other, it's like comparing apples and Chevies. They're simply different games, plain and simple.

In RE, the object is to collect tiles of high value. You collect tiles by starting your turn with one of your markers on an area containing five or more tiles of the same color (you collect N-4 tiles from a reef that you eat). The values of the tiles are partially under your control during the game, though the values only matter at the end of the game. Each tile of a color will be worth between 1 to 5 points at the end of the game. So, in addition to your having to collect the tiles, you have to spend some time locking high values onto the color tiles that you are collecting.

The same part of the board that controls the end values of the tile colors also controls which colors are "dominant" during game play. When one color is dominant over another, tiles of the dominant color can be used to kick tiles of the recessive color (replace them) off the board. You can use then use the tiles that you kick off the board to control the tile values/dominance, or you can place them back on the board later.

At the end of each round, you get some more tiles from random piles, as well as a "control cube" - you spend a control cube on a color each time you want to place one or more tiles of that color.

Lastly, you have four markers, which sit on reefs and protect the spaces immediately orthogonal to them from being eaten by other colors, regardless of which color is dominant. Add to that some wacky board geometry, and you spend a lot of your time trying to figure out where the best place on the board is to grow your reefs so that they can get big before you eat them - and without other people's tiles eating yours before you can harvest them.

In our game, both Sara and Abraham had large reefs that they ate, but Abraham got the colors locked in his favor. I had the choice on the last round which way to swing one of the tiles, and I swung it in favor of Abraham because I thought Sara had eaten more than Abraham had in his color specialty. Turns out I was wrong. If I had chose the other way, Abraham would have had 8 less points, and Sara 8 more points, and I would still probably have lost by a point or two.

R-Eco

David 16, Gili 15, Eitan 5

Also first play for Eitan, which surprised me.

Tichu

Jon/David 515, Nadine/Ksenia 385

First play for Ksenia. This did not start out well for us.

In the first round, they both went out first. The next round we gained 15 points to their 85. The third round we split 50/50. David and I had crappy hands all three times.

Finally I got a decent pull and I called Grand Tichu (2 aces, 2 kings, Phoenix, jack, and 2 nines). It wasn't a cakewalk, but I made it, plus another 50/50 break. We were still losing, and Nadine wanted to quit while they were ahead. I coerced her into playing one more round, in which David and I both went out. David went out first, and Nadine was on my right with only one card. And I had several cards and the Dog. Luckily, Nadine's card wasn't higher than a jack, and I was able to slowly play through all my cards and exit with the Dog.

May 05, 2010

2010-05-06T12:12:00.000+03:00

Participants: Tal, Hershel, Gili, Nadine, Jon, Bill, Shirley, Liza, Abraham

I arrived a little late, to Tal welcomed the first guests. Hershel returned after a long absence. Bill and Shirley brought a friend Liza, who had not played any modern games.

Set

Tal, Hershel, Gili

Tal entertained them with this until I arrived. I don't know how it went.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

Nadine 23, Hershel 19, Gili 16, Jon 15

First play for all of us. I read the rules for this last shabbat, and read them again as we set up. It looked like it wasn't going to be too complicated a game, but strategies were not obvious from the first. We all started making essentially random moves until about a third of the way into the game.

This is an area-control, negotiation game with some twists.

The game doesn't specify any kind of negotiation in the rules, but at several points in each round players may decide the fortunes of other players, which leads inevitably to negotiation. I'm not exactly thrilled with that mechanic, unless negotiations are enforceable; I don't enjoy backstabbing games (except Diplomacy, which is nothing but). And, with negotiation over fairly important points, much of your success or failure is a result of other people's whims, which means he who whines most generally wins.

In this game, negotiation plays a strong role unless you play carefully to avoid it. So it's kind of a mix. And we played with hidden victory points (they were trackable, like in Puerto Rico, but no one tracked them), so you couldn't always figure out to whom to give the points, assuming that you wanted to give them to the losing player and gang up on the winner. In actuality, we always guessed correctly. Nevertheless, the other players would have preferred to play with victory points open, so that they didn't have to guess.

Anyhoo ...

Other than that, the game was quite good. It reminded me of a more intense interactive version of Tribune.

It's played over five rounds. On each round:

- you collect income (a bit more if you have certain things on the board)
- all of your pieces on the board "age" (some die)
- you get a new piece or you get a VP or another gold
- you take as many actions as you can afford, and you may get some bonus actions if you had control of an area the previous round; there are various different actions, to age or youthen one of your guys, add new guys, move guys, take a victory point, gain bonus voting power, increase your income level, and so on
- you figure out who has control of each area, winning 2 points if you gain control of it (but not if you simply keep control of it)
- all players who have control of any area now vote for the new emperor, between the current emperor and the contender if there is one; the emperor gains a VP or two and some other bonuses on the next round (and the voters each get a point)

You gain points for: one of the actions, gaining control of an area, being in control of one particular area, voting for the emperor, or being the emperor. All of these are 1 to 2 points each, so final scores are low. All of the other mechanics seem like a lot of work to gain these few points, but it never felt like it was dragging or uninteresting.

In our game, I kind of got knocked out from all areas in mid-game, which made coming back very difficult. The only reason I did as well as I did were the few points thrown my way because everyone knew I was losing. None of use knew for sure who was winning, but we all essentially figured out the correct order. Nadine took the most straight victory points directly from the cards, and also had the highest income the earliest; I don't know how she managed that, yet.

R-Eco

Shirley, Bill, Liza

First play for Liza, I don't know what happened. Nadine coached.

Container

Shirley, Bill, Liza, Abraham

I didn't think this was the best first game for a new player, but at least, as Nadine said, the mechanics repeat themselves and are not too difficult. Shirley won.

April 28, 2010

2010-04-29T15:41:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Abraham, Bill, Eitan, Emily

We didn't split into two groups, for some inexplicable reason.

Dominion/Dominion Intrigue

Abraham 57, Nadine 51, Jon 48, Bill

Kingdoms: Council Room, Library, Spy, Workshop, Courtyard, Shanty Town, Baron, Mining Village, Duke, Torturer

I've never played with Shanty Town or Duke, and I've only played once with Courtyard, Baron, or Torturer. I considered Duke for a while, but instead decided to pursure a general 2 action/draw 3 cards strategy. My strategy netted me 7 of the 12 provinces, so it worked well. However, as you can see from the scores, it didn't work well enough.

Avraham went for early Duchy's, gaining 5 before everyone else stole the rest from him (Nadine had 4, I had 1, Bill had 2). Which means that all of his Dukes were worth 5 points each. I had more provinces than he had Dukes, but then you add in his Duchys.

What I don't get is how he managed to buy as much as he did with so many early VP cards. Apparently early Barons and Silvers were enough to do the trick.

Nadine followed a strategy similar to Abraham, but a bit behind him. Still, it surprised me even more that even she managed to beat my score. She was very satisfied with this, as she was annoyed that I used Torturer several times during the game.

Robo Rally

Abraham+, Bill, Jon, Eitan, Emily, Nadine

And so, this was one of the few games that we could find that would sensibly accommodate all six of us (I thought of Antike a moment too late).

First play for Eitan and Emily, second for Abraham. Bill had played this once many years ago.

Rules: I used one board (Pit Trap) and two flags, without having to return to start. We each started with one option, and you didn't lose the option when you died (but you did restart with two damage points, and you could only die twice; you're out if you die three times). Also, you could decide at the end of the round if you wanted to power down on the next round.

The game took about 3.5 hours, which was too long for Nadine. It was one of the few times I've played the game where there was real competition and tension until the end.

Emily started the game by walking into a pit, and then did it again, and then spent the rest of the game on the wrong side of the board, trying (futilely, as it turns out) to avoid dying a third time.

Eitan was the first to touch the first flag, and though he had died twice, he looked like he might make it to the second flag. However, Bill, who had also touched the first flag by that point, targeted him and managed to shoot and push him off the edge of the board at the same time.

Nadine also managed to die three times, but she wasn't too unhappy about it, as her head was hurting by that point.

I only died once, and I came close to the first flag a few times, but each time I was blocked. By the end of the game, I finally touched the flag, and then I walked off the side of the board (for my second death) so that I could reappear closer to the second flag. I was one or two rounds back from Bill and Abraham, however.

Bill and Abraham had to figure out how to rest on the second flag by the end of the game, without having the other one push him off the board. Luckily for Abraham, Bill simply couldn't draw the right turn cards to position himself to shoot Abraham as he had shot Eitan, and so Abraham took the win.

April 21, 2010

2010-04-25T14:19:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, David K, Lori, Abraham

I lost all my notes and am posting this late, so it is incomplete.

R-Eco

Nadine, Lori, Gili, David

First play for Lori.

Container

Abraham 80, Nadine, Lori

First play for Nadine and lori, who both liked it. Abe writes: I won with 80 something dollars, don't remember other people's scores.

Nadine writes: Lori was second in Container, about 10 pts less than Abe, I had a bit more than 10 less than her. I had money but only 2 containers on the island and had to throw out one.

Puerto Rico

Lori/Jon 60, Nadine 54, Abraham 47

Lori had to leave midway, and I inherited her position. I studied the setup for a minute or two and then asked if we were, perhaps, missing 5 VP, which we were. As a result, I bought Harbor instead of a big building (Nadine already had Guild Hall). With both Factory and Harbor, I competed well with Abe on shipping (he had Wharf and Harbor) and Nadine on building (she had Factory).

Age of Empires III

David 97, Jon 91, Binyamin 88, Gili

First play for David and Binyamin, second for Gili. I don't remember too much about the game, except that Binyamin prevented me from getting a merchant ship I wanted in round 8.

April 14, 2010

2010-04-15T12:00:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Ben, Binyamin, Abraham, Emily, Eitan, Joan, Lori, Bill

Lori returned for her second session. Joan is Eitan's grandmother, and she came to play Bridge, for which she found willing participants. Ben and Binyamin both returned after long absences, returning some games they had borrowed several weeks ago.

Robber Knights

Ben 29, Gili 28, Binyamin 27, Jon 23

First play for Ben and Gili, second play for me and Binyamin. Nadine didn't want to play, so sat off to the side. Midway through the game, Binyamin remembered that he didn't want to play, either, but managed to finish the game.

Most of our game group doesn't like tile-laying area control games, such as this, Carcassonne, Taluva, and similar. Binyamin in particular thinks this game is more dull than most. I disagree. I don't think it's a fantastic game, but I'm happy to play it and I don't think it's boring. At least, when your opponents move at a reasonable clip.

Ben took quite some time to make his moves, which is part of what frustrated Binyamin, and me a little. There's not enough game there to think that long. Still, he won, so there you go.

Dominion + Intrigue + Seaside

Jon 45, Emily 30, Bill (Lori) 27, Eitan 23

Scores approximate. I tried to teach this to Lori, but her eyes kept glazing over. Eventually, Bill sat down to "help" her, but he ended up playing while Lori watched.

We had two reaction cards and no attacks. Nothing that gave 2 actions, but we had Upgrade and Remodel. We had the card that gave +1 action/+1 card/+1 VP, and the one that gave +2 coins and +1 action/+1 card if this was the third or later action on your turn.

Emily and Eitan tried combination of the latter two cards, while I remodeled my way to glory.

Emily+, Eitan, Bill

The next game they played took a few hours, but it was interspersed with a lot of general chit-chat between them and other non-playing people in the room.

Summoner Wars

Gili++, Abraham

First play for both of them, Abraham brought this, the first of several games he recently acquired. They both appeared to be having fun. I think Gili won at least two games.

Bridge

Ben/Binyamin, Jon/Nadine

We played a few hands.

Ben/Binyamin, Joan/Nadine

They played several more hands. Joan is quite an experienced player.

Jon 3380, Joan 2100, Nadine 1600, Ben 1200

We played a 12 game round robin, changing partners after every four hands. Vulnerability was None, Dealer, Dealer, All. Scoring was duplicate.

Ben played Bridge for three and a half hours and drew an opening hand twice, 12 and 11 points once each, and the rest of his hands were 10 or less points. It's hard to win non-duplicate with that kind of luck.

In our first pair-up, Nadine and I scored two games, then went down 2. In the last hand, Ben and Joan scored a partial with overtricks. In the next set, Joan and I scored two games, set our opponents once, and then went down 1.

In the last set, Ben had no hope of winning since I was ahead of him and he was my partner. Our opponents made a game, but we set them three times, once for 500 points.

April 07, 2010

2010-04-08T20:23:00.000+03:00

Participants: Jon, David, Nadine, Lori, Gili, Abraham

Lori is a new attendee who found us through an Internet search. She had no gaming experience.

It's Alive

Lori+, David, Jon, Nadine, Gili

I don't prefer this five player, but this one moved ok. And it was nice for the new player to win. We played the basic game.

Settlers of Catan

Lori 10, Jon 9, Gili 8

And she won this one, too, but it was pretty close. I got hit by the robber three times, and was one card away from stealing Longest Road from her.

After two new games, Lori couldn't handle learning any other new ones.

Power Grid

David 15, Nadine 14, Abraham 13

It looked like Nadine was winning through most of the game, but, as is usual for Power Grid, only the last few rounds really made a difference. They played on France.

Boggle

Jon, Gili, Lori

Lori couldn't handle any new games, but she could play this. Gili, on the other hand, is a native Hebrew speaker, so this was a challenge for her. I'm fairly facile at the game.

To balance the game, we played with handicaps. I could only find words of five letters or more, Lori had to find four letters, and Gili three letters. We earned for any words not on the other players' lists, and +1 bonus point for each letter beyond our minimum (so I earned 2 points for a six letter word). This worked fairly well.

Gili won about half the games, but not by a large amount. We had a few boards where I couldn't find any five letter words, though I could see a number of four letter words that the others missed.

Tichu

Jon/Abraham 1090, David/Nadine 1010

A complete game, which lasted about 2 hours and 12 rounds. Abraham bid and made two grand tichu's. Scoring was very close the entire game.

March 31, 2010: Games Day

2010-04-01T20:24:00.000+03:00

Participants: Gili, Nadine, Abraham, Elijah, Cliff, Emily, Eitan, Bill, Jon

Despite my efforts, there was a Games Day this year. Gili hosted as I wasn't able to, and fun was had. I only showed up at 5:00 or so.

Age of Empires III

Jon 115, Nadine 110, Gili 109

First game for each of them, second game (first three-player game) for me. We had no conflicts during the game. That may have been because of the personalities of the players, or that investing in conflict takes a lot of precious resources for little reward. Though it causes the other players to have to invest a little in defense.

Otherwise, the game was tighter than the two-player game, but just as good. I was pretty sure that Nadine was kicking our butts, as she got her economic engine off to a fantastic start. Toward mid and end-game however, I/we were no longer sure, as I had several discovered territories and Gili had a nice bonus buildings. We were right, as it came down to the wire.

Nadine might have won if she had invested in more buildings earlier. Gili would have won if she had succeeded in her last discovery attempt (a loss of 7 or 8 vps). So, yeah, that little part of the game is somewhat annoying, but it is actually a minor part of the game. And you don't even have to spend your time on discoveries, if you don't want to.

Nice game. Looking forward to playing it with four and five players.

Nadine adds: Age of Empires III is a good basic Euro.

Blood Red Sands (RPG)

Bill (GM), Elijah, Abraham, Emily, Eitan

Bill says: By the end of the session, we each had 0 victory points.

We were mostly able to learn the rules, but there are still some points that need clarification. The ordeal creation portion of the game took several hours, probably because we were still learning the rules. This was bad for the hero player, because he had to be out of the room for that period. He thought he finished his character very early but actually had not, because he had not made the background. I didn't explain this to him initially because I wasn't there when he thought he finished and also because I was so involved in the ordeal creation and answering rules questions. Also, being a lot like Universalis, I'm not sure this is appropriate as a pickup game, since (in my experience) this type of game seems very dependent on the personality mix of the group.

There was one contention for the position of Chronicler, which was successful. Since I was very inexperienced and the other players were very very inexperienced, play was a bit rocky after that, but picked up after a while. The total length of actual play was fairly short though, because most of the play time was consumed in ordeal creation.

During the only clash that happened that night, I was constantly referring back to the rules for clarification because I didn't have a full enough understanding, which took away from the overall play experience and I think gave the rules the appearance of greater complexity than there really was.

The end result was that after the game, at least one player had the impression that the Blood Red Sands was more complex than D&D 4e. I don't believe it is, but I blame my shallow understanding of the rules for that impression. To play it successfully as a pickup game, I think at least one player has to have a deep understanding of the rules and none of us did last night.

David & Goliath

Abraham+, Elijah, Nadine

Played as a filler.

El Grande

Abraham 111, Nadine 103, Elijah 100, Gili, Cliff

Nadine says: It was a great game, very close, with each player in the lead at different times. At the start of the third scoring round we were all within a few points. In the last turn, Gili put the king in Abe's region to keep it away from where her guys were. He scored with it 3 times - once when he took score one region, when I took score all the four regions, and at the end of the game. Cliff hadn't played before but is a war gamer and caught on quickly, though he missed how the castillo works the first scoring round.

Hunting Party

Jon 25, Nadine 9, Gili

First play for me, second for Nadine and Gili. I scored a pretty combination of cards at the start of the game: a) pay 3 to take back a share, and b) eliminate the cost of some other ability. So each round I got back a share, for free. I won when Nadine ended the game and I had lots of cash.

It's an ok game that seems somewhat unbalanced and not quite the sum of its parts. There's not much game there. On the one hand, it's better than Clue, with which it shares a genre. On the other, the mechanics just aren't that interesting.

Nadine adds: Hunters doesn't feel strategic, and is too long. I shouldn't have fought at the end but forgot that I only get a share of the money. If I hadn't, the game would have gone on for at least half an hour, and I don't think I could have won. I should have gotten more than I did for guessing right and having all the right things, though of course that's at the expense of keeping shares. Jon had good cards and played well with lots of money the whole time.

Shadows Over Camelot

Abraham, Gili, Elijah, Nadine, Emily, Eitan, Bill

The loyalists won. Bill was the traitor, but he only arrived for the last two rounds of the game, and so didn't have much chance. Nadine adds: Shadows is always a lot of fun somehow.

March 17, 2010

2010-03-18T14:58:00.000+02:00

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

2010-03-03T23:35:00.001+02:00

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.

February 24, 2010

2010-02-25T00:44:00.000+02:00

Participants: Nadine, Gili, Abraham

First of three game nights at Nadine's while I'm in the US. Session report by Nadine:

Gili and Abe arrived at about the same time.

David & Goliath

Abraham+, Gili, Nadine

Gili+, Abraham, Nadine

Abe had never played David and Goliath so we played two games. Abe won the first one by a lot, Gili won the second one.

Cuba + expansions

Abraham 73, Nadine 70, Gili 70

Then we played Cuba with the expansion buildings. Abe bought one of them on the first round, that lets you trade 5 different non-cube things for 9 points. I had the sugar-rum-points buildings.

Abe had a lot of money and cubes, he won the political influence every round except the last two. The second to last round Gili won and selected the card that lets you only produce one resource, so Abe couldn't get the resources to use the building, so he didn't use it all game. The market had been cleared out by political cards. He was able to ship, and still won.

Final score Abe 73, me and Gili tied at 70, I had two coins. We had talked about her keeping a coin for a tie breaker during the bidding, but she wanted to select cards. We could have each done a few things differently.

The game seems very well balanced because it's usually close at the end, after my two games. It's fun, not too long, with interesting choices that seem to matter though almost all my choices were worth 2 points. Abe beat me in number of useless cubes.

February 17, 2010

2010-02-19T02:42:00.000+02:00

Participants: Jon, Gili, Claude, Binyamin, Nadine, David K, Mace

I had some last minute work to finish. Claude is a local designer of simple but interesting wooden games who has come before, and also, coincidentally, a friend of Gili's. He introduced a number of his own new games.

Claude Game

Mace, Claude, David+, Nadine

I forgot the game name. The game was like Mastermind crossed with Liar's Poker, and I didn't get to play it. The game was enjoyed by all the players, however. From only looking at the game, I'm not sure that each player, if sufficiently highly intelligent, should not be able to win siultaneously.

Each player secretly gets a role, and based on the role must either "always tells truth", "always tells lie", "alternates truth and lie", or "say whatever he likes". Each player is also given a card in one of four colors and with one of four numbers that all other players can see.

On a player's turn, he flips over an unused card from the 16 casrd deck, and then asks one of a set number of questions about his own card in relation to the flipped card: is it the same color? same number? and a few others. The other players, from LHO around, answer the question by placing their yes/no disks along a track, like a Mastermind track. The question asked is left visually beside the answers (using a simple code system). When you think you know what your card is, you reveal, and either win or lose (actually, I don't know what happens if you lose; do the others keep playing?)

Like Mastermind, it's more of a puzzle than a game, except that the "say whatever he likes" guy has more to do ... and also, we believe, has somewhat more of an advantage (will probably figure out his card one round before everyone else). And, though the board has a dozen track spaces, chances are that no more than 6 will ever be required.

It's the quietest game I've seen since Princes of Florence. Lots of working things and figuring.

Claude's games now have a website, which I will fill in here later.

Magic

David++, Jon+

We drafted Rochester draft again, though (as per comments on the previous Magic session) I may mix up the draft next time. we both ended up with White/Green/Red, since that's what came out. David only lost the second game because he reckelessly went full out on the last round, instead of attacking with half his critters, and then finishing me off the next round. The third game was close, at least.

Power Grid: Factory Manager

Nadine, Binyamin, Mace, Claude (part)

This was way too complicated for Claude, and he had to leave early, anyway. Nadine had to read the instructions to teach the game as she didn't remember them from the one two-player game we had played. This is always a painful way to learn a game, especially one as complicated as this one. I don't know the results.

Dvonn

David+, Jon

David had never played this, and he enjoyed it, as I suspected he would. He was a little unsure of the depth, since he beat me, but I convinced him that it's easy to mess up, even with experience.