June 02, 2010

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.

August 27, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Tal, David K, Avi, Hillel, Mace, Rachel

Mace returned from Australia this morning, so was kind of out of it. David brought his son Avi back.

R-Eco

Nadine 18, Jon 16, Tal 3

Second play for Tal. We played with the random chips variant. Nadine says that it's a lot of luck, but there sure was a lot of thinking going on for a luck game. I know that I had numerous tactical choices to make during the game.

I was the only non-dumper which was worth 4 points, but it was not enough to beat Nadine's high powered chip collection.

Notre Dame

Nadine 58, Avi 46, Mace 45

First plays for both Avi and Mace. Mace was zonked, and Avi is only 10 or so [DK: 8] and speaks English only so so. That they did as well as they did is amazing.

Industria

David 64, Hillel 62, Jon 55

This was our first play. I've tried to get the game out before, but the closest we ever came was learning the rules. I had forgotten all of them by now, and I had to relearn them as we set up.

In fact, I got them all wrong time and time again as we played. By the middle of the second set of cards, it was obvious that so many things had gone wrong that the final scores weren't going to mean much. Nevertheless, we forged on to the end of the game.

In addition to getting the rules wrong, we had no idea what was flying in terms of strategy. We had no idea how to value the auctions or tiles. Only as we neared the 2/3 point, did we begin to get a grasp on what was going on.

It's actually a darn good game. Aside from the rather strange auctions, there are a whole lot of different little strategic options to pursue, and they all fit together rather well. My only complaint is the auctions itself. There's an unfortunate problem of two players being able to ruin the auction for the third without suffering much in the way of consequences. Perhaps this will clarify as we play more times.

I used up my money too quickly, and found it hard to recover. I still eked out a decent result. I concentrated on the technologies, which were flush with points, but not enough to cover for the lack of resource production. Meanwhile, David and Hillel had resources covered nicely. It still ended up close. I will definitely play again.

Torres

David, Jon, Hillel, Ari

First game for Hillel. We got about halfway through this game before David and Ari had to leave. It looked like David had a pretty clear lead, but who's to say. I wasn't doing too shabbily, either.

Puerto Rico

Jon 64, Rachel 52, Nadine 51

Nadine and Rachel selected the buildings, and chose a few combinations that I would never choose. We played with Harbor, Commodities Exporter (which is a Harbor for indigo and sugar only), AND Aqueduct. That was my strategy, and it did pretty well, as you can see. Didn't hurt having a tobacco monopoly, either.

Only Nadine took Factory, and she ended with two big buildings and a late Harbor. Rachel started in third position, and netted a lot of early victory points, and more with a Discretionary Hold.