June 23, 2010

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.

May 13, 2009

Participants: Jon, Hershel, Nadine, Abraham, Bill, Max

All regulars. Nadine is off to the US for two weeks after tonight.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Jon++, Hershel

I taught this to Hershel. In the first game, he played black. Already near the beginning of the game it was fairly clear that he wasn't doing too well. Black typically kills a number more characters than white. In my case, Gimli killed the Orcs, Boromir took out Sauron, and Gandalf killed something like 5 black pieces as he stormed into Mordor. Black had one piece left to my five, with no chance of finding Frodo.

We switched it around. Gimli still killed the Orcs (on the third move, or something), but his Gandalf only managed to kill one or two dark pieces. After half the cards were gone, the Black Riders rode from Mordor nearly all the way into the Shire and began picking off the weaker characters. Finally he came to the Shire and found Sam, Frodo, and Legolas. Sam tried to save Frodo, but the Black Rider killed them all, and that was that.

Stone Age

Jon 198, Nadine 187, Hershel 152

Hershel brought his copy. This was my first play.

Stone Age is a worker placement, resource management, and set collection game. It artistically and mechanically resembles Pillars of the Earth very closely, but it's a bit lighter. Instead of paying taxes, you have to pay food, which requires a bit more effort.

There's no master builder phase. Instead, the big gimmick here is that the number of workers you put onto an area determines how many dice you get to roll to see how many resources you collect from your location. There are 5 things you can collect, each numbered 2 to 6. When you try to collect the resource, you roll a number of dice equal to the number of workers you allocated to the collection area and then divide the number you rolled by the number of the area, rounded down. For instance, food is 2; if you roll a total of 11 in the food area, you'll collect 5 food. Gold is 6; roll a total of 11 in the gold area, and you'll collect 2 gold.

Therein lies my first and major problem with the game. Dice. Over the course of the game, dice will kind of even out, but not entirely. And the type of decisions you make seem to be full of strategy, but in the end your success is pretty random. There's no trading resources to make up for bad rolls, as there is in Settlers of Catan.

See our final scores? Would it surprise you to learn that I rolled the best, Nadine rolled slightly less well, and Hershel rolled poorly? There you go.

The winner is the one with the most victory points. You gain points in two major ways:

1) by collecting action cards which are available each round. Each action card has a cost of a few resources, gives some immediate benefit, and also gives a point bonus at the end depending on what else you collect. For example, some give you a certain number with which to multiply against the value of your automatic food production at the end of the game. If you get three cards of that type with 2, 1, and 1, and your food production is 8, then you gain a bonus of 4 times 8 at the end of the game.

Some of the cards just have symbols, and you get the square of the number of different symbols you collected in bonus points at the end of the game.

2) by collecting bonus tiles. Each bonus tile requires a certain combination of resources, and gives a bonus in victory points equal to the number value of the resources required to buy it. For example, a bonus tile that requires a gold (6) and two bricks (4 each) to acquire gives a bonus of 14 points when you buy it.

There are ways of increasing your food production (so you pay one less food per round), tools (so you can add to your dice rolls each round), and number of workers (pay one food per worker each round or lose 10 points for each unfed). And each resource area, other than food, only allows 7 workers per area, so occasionally you may be locked out of a particular area (which rarely makes any difference).

The game ends when either the cards, or one stack of bonus tiles runs out. One player can rush the game end by buying tiles from a single stack. That's not unfair, but I don't really like that mechanic too much.

You basically decide to concentrate on one of the few sets to collect. If two people go for the same set, you're both probably screwed and someone else who is trying for something uncontested will win. In our three-player game, we were all acting pretty independently, but people will probably clash more in a four player game.

The master workers drawn from the bag in Pillars of the Earth supplies a tad too much luck, but it's not in the same category as Stone Age. Planning in PotE is more rewarding and more interesting than in this game. But this game is still a decent game with ok mechanics. If a certain strategy is known to be dominant, this will balance out because more than one player will be trying to get it.

I would be much happier to play the game without dice: with dice rolls available for purchase with workers (roll 12 dice, and let players buy the dice rolls with their workers each round) or with each player drawing a random set of how many resources are available to them or to everyone each round, or some-such. Dice. Shudder.

In our game, I estimated the value of the cards versus the tiles and decided against trying for the card collection sets. Instead I took only cards that gave bonuses for the number of tiles you had (and some for the number of people you had), and then took 8 tiles. This gave me the regular points from the tiles and additional card bonuses for the tiles. And I rolled fairly well.

Nadine and Hershel each had a complete set of the card symbols (64 points each, or 8 points/card). Nadine also farmed a lot of gold with a lot of people and took a few tiles that netted her some 40 points for each one. Not enough.

Dominion

Abraham 54*, Max 34, Bill 16

First play for both Bill and Max. Abraham taught the game using the standard introductory set of cards. But he played the Villagers incorrectly, effectively playing them without using up actions to do so, and ending up with far too many actions than he should have. Bill noticed this mid-game. So his final score doesn't really count.

I receive the two BGG bonus kingdoms in the mail, but we haven't played with them, yet.

Cosmic Encounter

Hershel 4, Nadine 3, Abraham 3, Bill 2

Bill hasn't played this since 1991, and this was the first play for Hershel. I tried teaching Max, too, but his head wasn't into it. Too late, too complicated, and too crazy.

Hershel played Anti-Matter, Bill played Bully, Abraham played Vampire, and Nadine played Vulch. I don't usually think of Anti-Matter as very strong, but everyone else did, and he won (they played to 4 bases).

Traders of Carthage

Jon+, Max

First play for Max, first two-player play for me. Everything went along docilely for some time, and no ships were pirated after scoring until mid-game. At that point, I managed to score a 5 point ship alone, and then shortly afterward a 6 point ship alone, at which point Max resigned. He was too tired to be playing anyway.

October 19, 2008: Games Day

Participants: David, Avi (David's son), Mace, Shachar (Mace's son), Koby, Gili, Jon, Gilad, Nadine, Elijah, Binyamin, Rivka (B's wife), Tikva Shira (B's kid), Zvi Yehuda (ditto), Devora (ditto), Iska (ditto), Adam, Amir, Omri, Roee, Rudo, Yosef, Michael (Elijah's dad), Saarya, Rachel

A pleasant games day. Amir, Omri, Roee, Rudo, Gilad, and Koby all came from the coastal areas, which was nice.

We used both sukkahs, and sometimes had to look for extra chairs. At night, we also had to find a light for the other sukkah and finally managed to get it plugged in.

I took notes of the games played, but worse notes than usual, and I fear I might have missed a game or two. Here's what I got:

Cosmic Encounter

Mace+, Shachar, Elijah, Binyamin, Adam

I think that was the list. Several of these were new players, yet they still played a six player game, double powers, comets and asteroids, and what looked like half the flare deck.

Mace got to four bases fairly quickly as Prophet / Loser, but was then ganged up upon. The game then extended for another three and a half hours, until Mace finally managed to win in the end, anyway. Other powers in the game included Pentaform, Vampire, Plant, Mirror, and others.

For Sale

Binyamin and family played this.

Go

Adam 38, Michael 24

This took them a while on a full board. Michael is somewhat better than I am, and so proved a closer match for Adam.

Kingsburg

David 45, Gilad 44, Gili 39, Koby, Nadine

Koby brought this game and taught it to the others.

Lo Ra

This is Nadine's Jewish themed version of the game Ra. Played in the other sukkah.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam (dark)+, Binyamin (white)

Frodo was stomped to death by the Balrog while trying to pass through Minas Tirath.

Zvi Yehuda wanted to play this later in the day, but no one had time to explain the English to him.

Louis XIV

Michael 52, Yosef 51, Elijah 49

First plays for all of them, they all really liked it. Good thing we still have Nadine's copy around. It may see more play again.

Magic: the Gathering

David+, Jon

David and I got one draft and game in, and e beat me as usual, even though I played a four color deck and wasn't mana screwed, and he played a three color deck and was.

Mission: Red Planet

Rudo 54, Omri 47, Jon 36, Nadine 23

This is an are control game from Bruno Faidutti, and has his characteristic elements of chaos and bluffing. Which, unfortunately, I don't like, although I like Bruno Faidutti.

You have ten rounds, scoring after rounds 5, 8, and 10. You have four ships active at any one time going to 10 different areas of Mars, and holding between 2 to 5 astronauts. And you have 9 character cards, that let you a) add astronauts to one or two ships, and b) do a special action, including moving your astronauts, swapping an astronaut, and redirecting or blowing up a ship. The latter two, in particular, are the most chaotic parts.

Lastly, you have bonus points for a mission, or can put secret cards under many of the areas, so that, at the end of the game, that area scores nothing, or double, or gives some other random bonus. More chaos.

Each round, each player selects one of their characters and then turns it over in turn order, like Citadels. You only get your cards back if you play character 1.

Nadine and I lost mostly because we didn't understand the vast importance of the areas with more points, which exponentially accumulate in latter scoring rounds (I somehow thought they would be linear). So we didn't fight for them more.

It's not a bad game, and certainly not as annoying as Assassin, but I still screwed Nadine out of her moves twice at the beginning of the game, which was probably not enjoyable for her.

And there's no reason for it. If the cards are played like El Grande, instead of like Citadels, and if the cards placed on regions are placed open instead of closed, the game looks to be vastly more fun and interesting.

Mr Jack

Nadine (Detective)+, Jon (Criminal)

I survived with three suspects until round 8. I only had an unseen Jack in one round, and Nadine had to ensure that I didn't escape, preventing her from discovering anyone that turn.

Nadine then accused the right person, and not entirely at random. One of the three she had eliminated with a card from the red guy. And one of them she thought I had been positioning more for exit than the other.

Notre Dame

Yosef+, Gili, Saarya, +/Jon

I took over for someone in round four, but I forget who.

Power Grid

Shachar 17, Jon 16, Elijah 15++, Avi 15+, Mace 15-

We played on the German map, missing the south coast. Aside from the western area, prices were pretty expensive. All of us except for Mace started on the western shore, anyway.

Larger plants came out fairly early, and I snagged my entire plant needs before anyone else. Still, because I was behind in cities, I was producing less money, and so everyone else managed to catch up with their plants and building. In the end, I simply couldn't build more than Shachar owing to less cash. I'm still not quite sure how that worked.

Elijah and Mace were up to 14 cities when we were all at 12 on the last round. They had a bidding war over the only plant that would let one of them win, but it went too high for either the winner or loser to win. If it hadn't Elijah could have won after all.

Puerto Rico

Rachel 64, Jon 58+, Adam 58-, Nadine 56

Rachel was convinced she wasn't going to win when Nadine and I took second big buildings and Adam secured her first. She and Adam both had Harbors to Nadine and my Factories. But she played on anyway, taking a Discretionary Hold, something I probably should have taken.

It was all very close, but Rachel managed to ship 43 shipping points to my 21. Yowza.

Race for the Galaxy

Nadine 54, Gilad 40, Roee 29

First play for Roee.

R-Eco

David 12, Avi 7, Mace 7, Shachar 2, Koby -1

The opening game. Played again at least once later during the day.

Samurai

Zvi Yehuda 9++, Binyamin 9+, Amir 9-, Adam 8

No further info.

Settlers of Catan

Yosef 13, Elijah 6, Gili 5

Yosef won every game he played tonight, I believe. They played to 13, but it didn't help.

Shadows Over Camelot

Zvi Yehuda, Tikva Shira, Omri, Roee, Rudo, Avi

First plays for all but the first two, I taught them and then hovered around a bit to help them start. Luckily, Nadine was also sitting nearby and could fill them in on a few rules that I forgot, as well as help Avi on his first game.

Taj Mahal

Yosef 65, Gili 59, Elijah 28

First play for Yosef. Nadine and I looked over in mid-game, and Gili had a 20 point lead. We said that they should just concede, although Yosef did have a handful of cards.

Well, it seemed that Yosef was more persevering than we realized, making a dramatic comeback.

Tower of Babel

Yosef, Rivka, Devora, Iska

First play for Yosef, and Devora and Iska are very small kids, so I'm sure they weren't experienced players. I don't know any more about the game.

Ubungo

Rivka, +, +

Rivka played this shape game with two of her kids.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 128, David 108, Gili 102, Gilad 81, Koby 72

First plays for Gilad and Koby.

Omri 107, Nadine 105, Rudo 102

First plays for Omri and Rudo.

July 09, 2008

Participants: Jon, Avraham.

Another game night alost didn't happen. Avraham called and came a bit late, but everyone else seems to have disappeared.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Avraham++, Jon

I taught this to A, and he beat me twice, as Black and then as White. And he was still wresting with the abilities, too.

Yinsh

Jon+, Avraham

I taught this to A, and was happy to win so as to make up for my defeat in LotR:tC. He enjoyed the game.

Tigris and Euphrates

Jon 14, Avraham 4

And I taught this to A, too, and won by a compfortable margin, as you can see. We played on the entire board, although sometimes I play two-player on a reduced board. I started in the river delta, and built a massive kingdom with Green and Black. We had very few external conflicts; I think only two the entire game, and they were small ones.

We built a few monuments, and kicked them back and forth for a while with internal conflicts, but I ended up with control, and even abandoned one of the colors later as I didn't really need it. Basically: I was gaining fast, and he wasn't doing enough to disrupt me.

August 08, 2007

Participants: Jon, Dylan, Ben, Yitzchak, Nathan, Adam, Tal, Elijah, Yaira

Tal and Elijah dropped by after their play rehearsal. Tal brought her friend Yaira over, too. Nathan returned after a long absence.

I set up Industria for a quick run through the rules. It looks simple enough, and I hope to give it a complete go next time.

Cosmic Encounter

Ben+ (Demon, Sorcerer), Dylan+ (Judge, Calculator), Nathan+ (Witch, Grudge), Jon (Schizoid, Pacifist), Yitzchak (Void, Industrialist)

I took the Schizoid, a power which fills me with glee. Unfortunately, my win conditions were simply one of a series of mistakes I made throughout the game. They were: a) 3 foreign bases, and b) foreign bases not shared.

I hoped that my second power, the Pacifist, would give me a slight but not overwhelming advantage with this, because the Pacifist doesn't need allies to win battles. Also, the other players are ally happy. Of course, Filth would have been even better.

I neglected to notice that in a five-player game, I don't actually get to be Offensive player that often and that most bases are gained while allying with others. As a result, I never had a foreign base that wasn't shared.

I made other dumb plays, like not playing a compromise card against the Sorcerer, and such things.

Meanwhile, the other players asked lots of questions, but the closest they ever got to figuring out the criteria is that it involved tokens in some way. Dylan asked early on if the criteria involved where you placed your bases, to which I said no. He complained that in fact my answer should have been "yes" for that, since "the bases had to be placed on planets where other bases weren't". Ben and I disagreed.

You have to expect little problems like that to come up with the Schizoid.

Since no one could guess the criteria, and I couldn't seem to win, the game pretty much came down to getting five bases and zapping me. Dylan got five bases, and then Ben and Nathan did. Ben then Super Demoned his power onto my Schizoid. Yitzchak and I could get to four bases, but no more.

Meanwhile, the other two most abused powers, Judge and Witch, were also in the game, as well as the Void. The Void is the only power I refuse to play with in the game, not because it is too weak or too strong, but because it makes the game not fun. My fix for the Void is to change it to the Praw; tokens go to the Praw, and can be taken either from Praw to Warp, or from Warp out. Dylan and I both thought that the Judge might be too powerful, as well. We couldn't figure out how to fix it, and in any case, the fact that the judgment doesn't apply when a comp is played or the Demon is used, negates the power well enough.

While we played Cosmic, Adam and I started a game of Zertz, but abandoned it when Elijah came in.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam, Elijah

Adam and Elijah played at least one game of this, possibly more.

We played two games. I was black both times. We each won once. We also argued about whether Gandalf is a Maia and whether it's a waste of time to learn Quenya/Elvish.--Adam

It's Alive

Tal+, Yaira

Tal+, Adam, Yaira, Elijah

Tal introduced this to Yaira. Then Adam and Elijah joined for a four-player game. I took a look late in the second game and thought Adam was going to win, but Tal somehow pulled off a victory.

Yaira liked the game well enough.

I was about to win a few rounds before the end of the game, but then drew a villagers tile that I couldn't pay for, which set me back enough that Tal was able to pull it off. --Adam

Apples to Apples

Elijah, Adam, Tal

They played a number of rounds of this, until Dylan Adam got into some lengthy discussion with Genia about Esperanto.

Bridge

Jon/Adam, Ben/Yitzchak

And we played a few rounds of this to end the night. I lost one hand by not figuring out that Ben had to have the singleton King of Spades.

Yehuda

May 02, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Binyamin, Zack, Elijah, Annette, Eliezer, Gili

Annette and Eliezer are a mother and son from Ramat Beit Shemesh who came after wanting to come for a long time. The son plays every shabbat with his friends, and the mother also enjoys the games.

Unfortunately, it was a long trip back and forth for them without a car, so they will probably be looking to play more in Beit Shemesh than with us. But they're welcome back, and they especially should consider Game Days.

We had the usual initial confusion about how to sort people into games. Not everyone was entirely happy with the division, but there you go.

Railroad Tycoon

Jon+, Binyamin, Elijah, Zack, Gili

I love a good train game, and I had some good hopes for Railroad Tycoon, having heard that it was a "nicer" version of Age of Steam. Now, despite everything I'm going to write next, I did like the game.

However.

I'm appalled. Appalled at the production and development of this game. Let's start with the physical problems.

The game is freakin' big, and there is no reason for it to be that big, large areas of the board are simply not used. The boards didn't fit on my table, which resulted in them being bumped all the time.

The board comes as three sections, and they managed to cut words, cities, and round marker circles right down the middle, so that those areas of the board were constantly shifting and unsteady, right where you needed to read information or place items.

The cities were so small that when you placed the marker cubes on them, you could no longer read their names, and therefore find the cities. Furthermore, the colors of the cities didn't match the colors of the cubes. A yellow cube went to a yellow city, but a blue cube went to an indigo city, which looked more like the purple cubes, which actually went to the lavender cities. And the indigo cities looked almost like the black cities.

And speaking of colors, unlike Through the Desert where they managed to use five colors for the camels and five different ones for the players, here the user colors and cube colors overlapped, which caused confusion.

Information on a board this big should be written at various angles and rules summaries printed on all sides. Instead, the writing was small and facing only one way on one side of the board, totally useless for all but the rightly situated player. What's wrong with player aids for each player?

The game had ridiculously overproduced plastic pieces that went on the board only to mark areas that were now empty (and obscured the board), undoubtedly raising the price of the game by a considerable amount. Yet they didn't include a round marker to go over the three round mark spaces on the board! We had to use a spare track hex for that.

The trains were more overproduced plastic which toppled frequently and served no other purpose than to mark the tracks, where simple train meeples would have worked better. If they were going to make something so fancy, why not at least give the trains space to hold the wooden cubes?

Like many other games with hexes overlaid on natural maps, their natural terrain not only made it more difficult to read the writing, but to figure out what type of terrain some of the hexes actually were. Is this a mountain? A plain? It's got a bit of both in it.

Each space in the scoretrack could only hold a single piece, which made it useless for five players. The cost of upgrading a train from 1 to 2 is printed on the side with the 2 on it, rather than the side with the 1 on it; in other words, instead of "this is how much you need to pay to upgrade to the next train" you get "this is how much you had to pay to have upgraded to this train, said information being in the entirely wrong place".

I could go on, but really.

For the most part, the game is a classic build track and deliver cubes game, which is what I like. Unlike Age of Steam, you can't completely wipe out at the beginning of the game. However, we had some issues both with what was there and what wasn't there.

What was there: The bidding for first player was a flawed mechanism. Only the top player pays, and then the round goes clockwise. As a result, if you only want to ensure that you go before someone, you can bid high enough to make that happen and then drop out without paying anything. A bidding for turn order mechanism makes more sense here.

While there are a few ways to get cubes onto the board midgame, for the most part it seems that the cubes are all put out and then empty. Once they are emptied from the congested area, it appears that the game is going to peter out. That was the feeling that we got, and the reason that we decided to end the game at that point.

However, I think we were probably not entirely right about this. Binyamin pointed out that he had a number of high-link movements in the wings. Also, we never got to the Eastern links or most of the delivery bonuses (we did some). I think the game fell victim to the large amount of time it took us to get to this point and some bad group-think. As a result, I am happy to assume that this problem will go away.

Furthermore, Age of Steam's strong point isn't the cube renewal aspect, anyway.

The rules don't cover some obvious situations, such as when a card like "first person to connect to so-and-so gets points" flips up way after this has already happened. I believe this is a FAQ, however. And there was one card which read "take two additional actions", which looked like it would be a Bad Thing if those two actions were to allow you to take two more cards (or even one more card).

I can't tell how the strange income reduction mechanic works, since we didn't reach it, but it looks just as artificial and non-sensible as the backwards movement in Age of Steam.

What was not there: There is far less screwing with other people than there should be. It was almost serene, which was a little dull. The role cards of Age of Steam are greatly missed. The event cards from Empire Builder are also greatly missed.

But, despite all the above, and the likelihood that we will be changing some of the rules asap, the game is still a rail-building pick up and deliver game, which is just great fun. I enjoyed myself, although I didn't have to think overly much.

Like most games of this sort, there is a nice curve you need to follow from beginning to end; invest in the beginning, switch to point making in the middle, make points at the end.

Puerto Rico

Nadine 54, Annette 49, Eliezer 45

Nadine got to teach these guys Puerto Rico, and it looks like a good time was had by all.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Elijah++, Jon

I played this simultaneous with Bridge, and I think I suffered at both a bit because of it. As black, Elijah did a good job at wiping out my guys, with only Frodo left, he only managed to get him right on the doorstep of Mordor. In the reversed roles, Elijah managed to retreat Frodo and sneak around me before I was anywhere near the Shire.

Bridge

Jon/Zack, Nadine/Binyamin

We played five hands of this.

April 11, 2007

Participants: Jon, Zack, Gili, Adam.

A very small group tonight, which was great for me, as I started getting sick earlier in the day and was going to have to kick everyone out early, anyway. Also, it's amazing how quiet four people are compared to a whole group.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Jon+, Zack

Zack tends to lose this when he plays Elijah, but as this is a fairly quick opening game which he already knew how to play, I opted for it.

I played white. I made an early sacrifice of Gandalf with a low card so that my remaining cards would be one step up over his. This was against Shelob, and therefore I saw, for the first time, Shelob return to her lair.

Zack seemed to be ignoring the search for Frodo, concentrating instead on trying to get into the Shire. Frodo was therefore able to sneak into Mordor before he could do this.

Caylus

Gili 80ish, Jon 70ish, Adam and Zack 60ish

I'm not a big fan of Caylus, but with only Zack and Gili around, and the fact that Gili likes it and Zack had never played, I agreed to give it a go. Then Adam joined us just as I finished explaining the rules and so we made it a four player game.

The game went generally better than the lest few times I played so I wasn't interminably bored. There was a lot of jockeying for position with the turn order and the Provost. Furthermore, every brown building was built before the gray ones began to appear (one gray building was built before the last brown building), and then all but one gray building was built.

As a result of the building order, gold was in very short supply, but we still managed to get a few blue buildings built. Gili was obviously winning already by the last third of the game (one of the problems I have with the game). I knew I could catch up a bit, but not enough.

She built the 25 pointer, and I was ready on the next round to build two smaller blue buildings, when she passed in the placement phase a round before I needed her to, resulting in my being able to collect one less cube than I needed. Lucky for me, I noticed that I could build the small blue building for 7 and a favor, use the favor to get the extra cube I needed, and then in the last scoring phase build the other blue building for 14. Still not enough, as you see.

Adam would have liked to take that 7 point blue building, but I got it first, so instead we helped him notice how he could get the blue building that required pink cubes through some finagling, which he did.

It was only 9:45, but I decided to go to bed.

March 21, 2007

Participants: Jon, Ben, Binyamin, Zack, Elijah, David Barren, Adam, Gili, Nadine, Dylan

David wraps up his last visit to the JSGC and returns to America next Tuesday. Thanks for joining us!

Geschenkt

Binyamin 5, Ben 21, David 22, Zack 34, Jon "many"

First play for David and Ben. Binyamin had made me a mockup of this and I needed a filler game while waiting for the stragglers to come in. Still a nice quick game. I somehow lost control of my tokens and swallowed a lot of bad cards.

Blue Moon City

Zack+, Binyamin, Jon, Nadine

First play for all of us. BMC is a board game based on the card game Blue Moon, which none of use had played, either.

There is some story about rebuilding a city and seven races with different abilities and so on, but essentially it is an area control game. You control areas by moving to them and playing the cards of the same color as the area. Simultaneously, you can use the cards for their special abilities, such as moving further, changing card colors, gaining "scales", and so on.

Each time you complete an area, all players who contributed to the area gain the value of the area plus a bonus for all areas completed nearby. First place in the area also collects a bonus.

Furthermore, any time you build you can get "scales" if a dragon is on your area. Whenever all the scales are collected, bonuses are given to the one with the most and all who have at least three. The scales are returned and you start collecting them again.

Eventually, you convert your collected points into cubes on the big tower, and the first to place four cubes on the big tower wins.

It is yet another one of those "get this to get that to get the third thing" games, ala Caylus, as well as having to match cards to claim areas ala Ticket to Ride or Alhambra.

The game is nicely progressive and interesting enough, and most importantly, quick enough. That's Knizia for you.

Undoubtedly there are some strategies to use in this game, such as which areas to go for first, whether to share in many areas or steal areas all to yourself, and whether to use up your cards early or try to save up. Most of us emptied our cards early.

I can't tell you after one playing why Zack won. All of us had three cubes on the tower when he got his fourth.

Dvonn

Dylan++, Jon

While waiting for my turn to come up in BMC, I taught Dylan how to play Dvonn and he beat me twice in a row.

Tigris and Euphrates

Gili 7, Adam 6, David 5, Ben/Jon 5

First play for David. Ben was very unhappy after losing a few conflicts he initiated, nor about lacking green and red tiles throughout the game. He also wasn't open-minded about varying his strategy. After BMC and Dvonn finished, I stepped in to his place. He had no green cubes and few cubes in other colors, and he had one treasure.

I through out all his tiles and picked up a green and red. Then I placed a monument for Green and Blue. I didn't worry about the Blue, letting someone else take it, since I was more concerned with boosting my own score. After two turns, I was already up to 4.

Unfortunately, people kept handing Gili 5 point conflict victories in various colors. And she had been losing until now, too. On my last turn, I made it to 5 points and I tried to end the game through a conflict by tossing out 4 tiles. Unfortunately again, I should have just tossed out all my tiles, as I was one tile short of ending the game, which let Gili have one more turn.

Either way, I wasn't going to win, but I did pretty well considering my starting position.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Elijah+, Zack

Zack was fresh off of his victory in BMC, but he rarely wins this game against Elijah.

Tichu

Zack/Elijah 335, Adam/Gili 265

They played three hands. Elijah and Zack took the lead in the first hand, and then the next two hands were 300 point swings either way.

Chess

Zack+, Elijah

Zack wanted to play, and Elijah fought to the bitter end.

Zendo

Jon, Dylan, Adam, David, Elijah, Zack

We played two games, one with me Master, and one with Dylan master. My rule was "All objects pointing different directions" which stymied them for a good number of round. Dylan eventually guessed it.

Dylan then stymied everyone else (I was off playing Bridge) and had to reveal the rule when I kicked everyone out for the evening. His rule was "A prime number of pips", which Adam cried foul, saying that even if he thought of that he would hev rejected it as too complicated.

Bridge

Nadine/Zack|Jon, Ben/Binyamin

We sure seem to be playing more and more Bridge. They taught Zack how to play, and then he went over to Zendo while I filled in for him.

Nadine and I had most of the hands, although nothing extravagant. I played 4 out of 5 of them.

The Menorah Game

Jon 46, Dylan 36

Dylan 52, Jon 40

I taught Dylan this. Unfortunately, he's not much into auction games.

Go

Jon++, Dylan

I also taught (or re-taught) Dylan this. As he is a smart fellow, I simply gave him first move on a 9 by 9 board. The first game was rather close, but in the second he made a serious mistake which let me live on a large section of the board.

Great Game.

Checkers

Dylan+, Jon

I almost never get to play this deceptively simple and under-appreciated game. I figured Dylan would be willing. We played while simultaneously playing Zendo.

I made a small mistake (are there any others in Checkers?) which prevented me from keeping parity with his jumps. Once ahead, he was able to corner me into resigning.

March 14, 2007

Participants: Jon, David K, Nadine, Ben, Binyamin, Adam, Elijah, Zack

Binyamin returns after being absent for a few weeks.

San Juan

Jon 47, David 38

I picked up David on the way home from work so we had a few extra minutes to play before the others arrived. David asked to play this.

I started with Builder/Tobacco, while David played Prefecture. While Prefecture is a great building, he made the mistake that most Prefecture players make which is taking Counselor at every opportunity, leaving me Builder or Prospector every round.

Despite his counseling, I still managed to get a Library out a few rounds before he did. By mid-game, I was essentially up a building. He also dropped a bunch of utility buildings mid-to-end game on his City Hall, while I was dropping Silvers on my Guild Hall. My Palace sealed it.

Cosmic Encounter

Ben+ (Obverse, Industrialist, Pacifist), Binyamin (Berserker, Virus, Zombie), Elijah (Symbiote, Sniveler, Worm), Adam (Amoeba, Vampire, Clone)

If I say that a lot of weirdness happened in this game, it won't surprise you, because it's Cosmic, after all.

The first problem was the large amount of time they spent deciding how the play would work, lobbying for and against Lucre, comets, moons, etc. In the end, Ben won this battle. To balance this, they ended up each playing three powers each, where two powers were active at any one time, and the third rotated in if you won a challenge.

Unfortunately for Ben, his "out" power was Pacifist, his in powers were Industrialist and Obverse, and his hand consisted of three Compromises, a 0, and a 6. Despite this, he managed to win the game. Apparently, he used Wild Trader to gain his fifth base, and then, as he was under attack, he used Wild Antimatter to essentially end the challenge.

But the weirdest part of the evening was reserved for Elijah and his Symbiote. The Symbiote is the power that gives you twenty additional pieces, which count for all purposes, but not for establishing foreign bases for the win.

The first problem was when Elijah played the Wild Schizoid. I ruled that the hexes change, but the Symbiote pieces still remain Elijahs where they now reside. This immediately gave him five foreign bases, although none of them counted towards the win. I considered a number of other possible rulings, but none of them seemed to work.

This resulted in all other players immediately ganging up on Elijah, so that he couldn't get the opportunity he needed to simply rearrange his pieces onto those foreign bases and immediately win.

The next problem was when Elijah lost his power and Binyamin played Wild Crystal, which lets him rearrange all tokens in a system. The problem is that the Symbiote power is written poorly. It says that the tokens may not be moved if you lose your power. This would seem to imply that even if others try to move or destroy the tokens or the planet, these tokens cannot be sent to the warp. I found this to be ridiculous, and I ruled that they cannot be moved "by you".

Power Grid

David 18, Jon 17, Nadine 16, Zack 15

We played on northern Germany.

In this game, we were truly at the mercy of the luck of the power plant flips, which made me wonder that there couldn't be a better power plant system. The only other alternative I can think of simply makes you vulnerable to the decision of whatever the guy before you does, which is no better.

This kind of swings the game too much, in my opinion.

The remainder of the game is still enjoyable, if you like this sort of thing. In the last few games that these guys played, the fuel was constantly running out. Therefore, they were in the habit of always buying as much as they can, which, of course, meant that the fuel kept running out.

On my first turn, I got the hybrid plant, and I bought only a single piece of fuel. I figured, both oil and coal weren't going to run out so quickly, so I'll just buy whatever is cheapest next time.

Owing to my decision, and my gentle persuasion, I convinced most of the other players to do the same. As a result, fuel prices all stayed very low the whole game, with coal and oil in the 1's for much of the game.

David found himself cornered at the beginning of the game. It looked near the end that I was going to win it, but with some collective help, we found the cities that David needed to build to eke out the victory in the last round.

Tichu

Adam/Elijah 495, David/Zack 205

They played 6 hands. They were neck and neck until the last hand, when Adam pulled off a Tichu and then Elijah went out, giving them a 300 point boost.

Bridge

Ben 1990, Jon 1810, Nadine 1610, Binyamin 850

We played with the following rules:

- 12 hands, switch partners after 4 hands.
- Each 4 hand round is No Vul, Dealer Vul, Dealer Vul, All Vul.
- Scoring is duplicate standard, assigned to each player in the pair.

My first partnership was with Nadine. We made a partial and set Ben 2 tricks in a slam they shouldn't have been in.

I then played with Binyamin. We made a game, but I went down in a game that I could have made with a whole lot of luck and cross-ruffing. Instead I tried a finesse which didn't work, combined with a 3-1 trump split.

In the last set, I played with Ben. At this point Ben was behind Nadine and needed a good 300 points or so to beat her. Neither Binyamin nor I could win, but that's not what Bridge is about, anyway.

Unfortunately for Ben, Binyamin began by making 4+1 in clubs, and then setting us 2 tricks in a some game. Ben was now down 600 or so points.

I bid and made a game. It was one of those hands where I had exactly matching distribution and I was missing three aces, and there was nothing to be done one way or another. Makes 4 all day.

This put us still back 200 points, which meant that we still needed a game (or to take them down many tricks) to win. With one hand remaining, Ben decided to go for broke bidding 3 NT when I had 6 clubs and 4 diamonds, and neither of us had bid the majors.

They had 5 tricks off the top if they would have played them, but it was hard for them to see it. Instead, Binyamin led a diamond into my ace-king. Ben had exactly 8 tricks, managed to steal a ninth, and simply gave them the rest. That moved me into second place.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Elijah++, Zack

Elijah won two games, first playing White and then Black.

March 7, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Elijah, Zack, Adam, David K, Gili

A light game group tonight.

TCP 7

When I first got home, I found Nadine waiting, and together we did a lot of cutting and drawing to try out my new prototype. Eventually five of us gave it a go. However, the components were so crude, and the crowd so not into trying a new prototype, that we didn't even get through the rules before they made me start some example rounds. And we only got through one round before they wanted to try a real game.

Which doesn't mean that they didn't see potential, only that it wasn't the right time for it. Nadine and David both said that it looked like it might be interesting. I will have to make some nicer components and try again.

Power Grid

David+, Zack, Nadine

Once again they were plum out of both oil and coal for most of the game. Zack eventually had a garbage plant and was happy. David was surprised when he won.

Children of Fire: the Board Game

Adam 10, Jon 6, Elijah 6, Gili 5

We tried this area control game again. It still appears to be a flawed game with a nice core and good theme. The game began to drag on, and we called it quits after 12 rounds.

I began the game by saying that we have to impose a turn limit, which is what I learned last time we played. I think 10 turns is probably about right. Adam, on the other hand, favors devaluing the points from the masses tokens.

Zendo

Adam, Zack, Elijah

All three love the game. Zack and Adam each had a turn being the Master, and both guessed the other's rule.

Netrunner

Jon(C)+++, David(R)

David began to have a bad night at this point. He built his runner deck out of my pathetic 60 cards, and each time he couldn't draw a sentry ice-breaker to save his life. He gave up three games in a row, once after his first turn.

I'm afraid that this left him with a bad taste about the game. If the game is so dependent on drawing the right ice breakers, it's not fun to play when you don't. I wonder if this is solved simply by tuning the deck with more cards, or if we just have to stack one or two ice breakers on top to make the game enjoyable.

By Hook or By Crook

Adam, Elijah, Zack

I didn't see the results of this game.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Jon(W)+, David(B)

From one ignominious defeat to another. David had only played this a time or two before, and so didn't think through the implications of some of his card play. After falling to two piece behind, he gave up in disgust, to fight another day.

Some days are just like that.

January 03, 2007

Participants: Jon, Tal, Zack, Alex, Nadine, David, Shevi, Josh, Jelman, Idit, Adam, Gili, Binyamin, Ben

Zack brought his grandfather Alex (I think I got the name right). He had no particular game history, but is a brainy, curious, and friendly type, which made him a happy addition to the group. Josh brought his friend Jelman (again, not sure about the name) who lives in Katamon. Jelman had game experience and was astonished and thrilled to come to the group. I expect his return as a regular.

I had gone over the rules to Netrunner before the group and was eager to try it out with my CCG partner David. Since we ended up with more than ten attendees, I was able to leave the others to work out their game choices while David and I slipped away for a go.

Saboteur

Saboteurs: Alex, Nadine, Shevi +, Dwarves: Jon, Tal, Zack, David

We started off with five until David and Shevi showed up. With five, two saboteurs against three dwarves is bad enough. Three saboteurs to four dwarves is nearly impossible. Especially when the rock slides all end up with the saboteurs.

Everything seemed hopeless until the deck ran out. Suddenly we were able to make a comeback, exploring a side branch and diligently working our way to the gold nugget. Unfortunately, we got close - within two lengths - but not close enough.

We played the game as a filled, and so we stopped after the first round. This was first game for all players (except me) and all of them seemed to like it well enough.

Netrunner

David, Jon

David and I slipped off to try out Netrunner. We've been playing Magic for ten years and have never tried another CCG. I recently acquired both this and the Middle Earth CCGs, having heard great things about them. Too bad both are now discontinued.

Initial impressions are: wow! I haven't seen bad CCG's yet, so I don't know if I can simply say that the entire idea simply lends itself to incredibly rich and complex gaming, or if I'm spoiled by these two great games.

The major differences between Netrunner and Magic are the unequal roles of the two players and the victory conditions. In Netrunner, one player plays the Corp, whose job is to play and activate Agendas, while the other plays the hacker, whose job it is to raid the Agendas before the Corp can activate them. The Corp tries to prevent the Runner from raiding by placing ICE defenses in the way of his raids or by dealing direct damage to the Runner, while the Runner tries to increase his hardware, resources, and countermeasure programs to give him enough power to get past the Corp's ICE and heal or prevent the damage.

I have only the barest feel for the types of cards that exist, how to approach the game strategically or tactically, or even the basic rules, of which we got several wrong on our first attempt, of course. We only made it through a few turns before we decided to stop and join others for a larger game. But I definitely look forward to trying it again.

Wildlife

Nadine, Zack, Alex, Josh, Jelman, Idit

Like other great games, six appears to be pushing the limit as far as downtime for a game like this. Despite this, they all seemed to enjoy the game. They discovered a major rule we had wrong, namely that points are given for largest herd, not most amount of creatures. This game went on for much of the evening.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam (B) +, Gili (W)

Adam and Gili had to wait for the Saboteur game, so they played this. This time, Adam took my advice and caught Frodo in the mountains where he couldn't retreat.

Children of Fire: the Board Game

David 14, Gili 9, Jon 8, Adam 8

Adam and I were both looking forward to trying this again. I enjoyed it again, but I think both Gili and David felt like it dragged on near the end. They may be right. One problem with the game is the lack of a definite ending, so there is a sense of wanting to simply end the game just to get it over with. This could easily be fixed by adding a limit to the number of rounds to the game, such as ten or so.

We still don't have an answer to two of our rules questions, both of which came up again.

In our game, I was thwarted on every turn, achieving only two of my four primary prophecies and not through my own effort but only because someone else wanted it, too. That, and the four masses I converted, gave me only 8 points. Adam did a lot of the moving, achieving a huge number of influence stones again, but even though he locked two of the figures, he didn't do any better than I did.

Gili had an additional secondary prophecy fulfilled and one less mass than either of us. David, on the other hand, fulfilled every single one of his prophecies, both major and minor, and also has a mass stone. This, despite losing countless times the fight over the influence stones to Adam, who always seemed to beat him with just the card he needed, just one number above David's.

Palazzo

Binyamin 45, Ben 41, Shevi 39

Binyamin introduced this game that is "better than Alhambra". It is, but I still didn't think it ws any great shakes. Ben particularly didn't like it, because he doesn't like auction games in general. Shevi and Binyamin both liked it.

Binyamin won, as he did for the rest of the games he played this evening.

Metro

Binyamin 72, Ben 68, Shevi 57

Binyamin introduced yet another game, about which I heard many mediocre comments on BGG. I don't know how it was received.

Power Grid

Binyamin+, Ben

Shevi left, so they played this two-player. As usual, Ben was blindsided occasionally by a forgotten rule, and he doesn't perform well in the auctions for the power plants, anyway.

Tichu

Nadine/Adm 205, Jon/David -5

Settling in to some enjoyable play, and we discussed whether their is any real cooperative aspect to the partnership. I maintain that as we become more experienced, our discards and play will become more subtle and more able to fully utilize the partnership aspect of the game.

We played three hands. I called Tichu in the third hand, and lost only to a bomb played by Nadine before I could finish my hand. Hence the negative score.