May 24, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.