October 31, 2007

Participants: Nadine, Yitzchak, Gili, Dylan, Genia

First game day out of three that will be in Nadine's house while I'm away in Canada. The report is from Nadine.

San Juan

Yitzchak 44, Gili 36, Nadine 29

Gili joined late and we let her take extra cards and builds to catch up.
Yitzchak did a good job with a Quarry and Library early in the game.

Pirate's Cove

Dylan 37, Nadine 32, Yitzchak 31, Genia 29, Gili 28

We agreed that there is too much luck in this game - both in selecting
islands and dice rolling. The game is not long enough for the luck to
even out. But it's a lot of fun to play. Thanks to Gili for bringing it
again. Genia did well and was leading for most of the game, but the
resultant attacks had their effect, even though she beat a Navy ship.
Yitzchak was also leading, tied with Dylan, but was destroyed in the last
round. I was behind most of the time til the end.

It's Alive

Yitzchak 50, Dylan 46, Genia 42, Gili 39, Nadine 39

Most of us were waiting for a long time for one missing card. We had a
good time playing. Gili got a lot of Villagers, usually followed by a
Coffin.

October 24, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Yitzvhak, David, Gili, Orah, Hillel

This was my last games night in Israel before a trip to North America. Nadine will be hosting game nights for the next three weeks.

Gili finally returned after her vacation, and she brought her mom, Orah, with her. Hillel is a new player who found us through my blog. He enjoyed himself, so hopefully he will be back. I didn't get to play with either of them, however.

Colossal Arena

Nadine 11, Jon 10, David 3, Yitzchak 0

The last time I played this I was not impressed. And no one has been hankering for it since then. So I was thinking of adding it to my trade list. Before I did, I wanted to give it another try.

Essentially, the game consists of selecting 8 out of the 12 available creatures to do battle. To do this, you need to separate out the 12 cards for each creature type from the pack of cards, as well as 11 spectator cards, and a few referee cards. The others are set aside.

You lay out the descriptive cards of each of the eight creatures at the top of the table. Each battle is "fought" in successive rows on the table beneath the top row. At the end of each battle, the lowest valued creature is no longer in play. The next battle is fought one row further down, with one less creature. After five battles, only three creatures remain.

Battles are fought by players placing cards corresponding to the creatures in the current battle row one by one. You can cover up a card already in place. As soon as all creatures fighting in a round have a card, the creature with the lowest number is eliminated. If there is a tie for lowest number, keep playing until there isn't. Cards are valued 0 to 10 for each creature and must be played on that creature. A card from single set of spectator cards valued 0 to 10 may be played on any creature.

Each round, you bet, place a card, and draw back up to 8 cards. Special cards or abilities may come into play.

During the game, you place bets on these creatures. The earlier the battle, the more valuable the bet. In the first round you can also place an additional secret bet. Only one person can place a bet on one creature each round, and only after the creature already has at least one card on it from this turn.

The last rule is the one I missed the first time I played and makes all the difference. It is a critical rule that makes the game far more enjoyable. Without it, you can bet on anything you want and then play a card on that bet. Instead, you have to play a card which might enable someone else to place the bet on it before it gets back to you.

Each creature also confers a special ability for you if a) you place a card on it this round, and b) you have the highest valued total bets on this creature.

It's actually an interesting game. The most interesting part is that you can place either low cards on creatures you don't like or high cards on creatures you do. You can end the game with a high card on the last remaining creature without a card yet, dooming some other creature, or a low card on that creature, dooming it instead. Assuming you have the card you need.

However, the game still has a few problems, which we noticed the last time, too.

The biggest problem is the point system, Like Quo Vadis, point scores in this game are simply too low and therefore likely to tie all too often. It's just not enough, and not enough ways to score. Furthermore, the betting system makes most of the bets fairly worthless and most of the creature special powers also fairly worthless. It's a drag on the game. Higher valued bets, the last row being worth something, and interim scoring opportunities ala El Grande would make the game much better.

The second problem is design. The spectator cards look exactly like the creature cards and are impossible to distinguish except by reading the fine print. They should have big words saying "Spectator" on them. And many of the creature cards have nearly the same coloration or name, making them hard to distinguish, too. There is no special corner symbol; you have to hold the cards so that the entire top of each card is visible. This makes setting up the game, and figuring out what you have in your hand difficult.

One other problem was remembering which creatures were eliminated from play each round at a quick glance. This information is important since you need to know how many creatures remain this round. Flipping over their card in the top row wasn't good enough, and in fact made it worse. Instead, we collected all the cards previously played on those creatures and made upside down piles in their column in the current row.

I think my problem last time also may have stemmed from too few players. You definitely need a full complement of betting to make the game interesting.

It's not going to hit the table often. However, it's also not too expensive, so not worth my effort in carrying it over to the U.S. to trade, as I doubt I would get much for it.

In our game, Yitzchak had bad luck and got eliminated often. Nadine and I seemed to overlap on most creatures, which made us allies. I had the nicer bets, but she had a secret bet which gave the final win.

San Juan

Gili 40, Hillel 34, Orah 34

Gili taught this to Orah and Hillel and they played the entire game with open hands.

Bridge

Jon/David, Yitzchak/Nadine
Played as a filler. I opened 2c on one of the hands.

Power Grid

Jon 18, David 17, Yitzchak 16

A win for me, which either means I'm getting better or that my opponents are making more mistakes. In an unusual turn of events for PG, it seemed like I was winning most of the game and then I actually did.

David took the early 8, I had the 5, and Yitzchak the 4. Yitzchak grabbed an early 20 which set the stage for too much coal usage. I seemed to lose the battles for all the best plants, but the others had to spend an extra 10 or 20 to get them. Instead, I built a lot of cities, kept the plant market cycling quickly, and ensured that I wasn't too dependent on the fuel others needed.

They eventually bought some green plants which reduced the resource supply problem, although coal was always still in short supply. I avoided it, since I was always buying fuel last and didn't want to be stuck without any.

Near the end, I had the least plant capacity, but I had 15 cities to their 10 each. But they still needed to buy plants because, even though they had more capacity than me, they still didn't have 17 or 18. So they were stuck buying plants and cities, while I only had to buy plants. And there were enough big plants to go around in Stage 3. In the end, neither of them could afford to get to more than 17 plant capacity, while I raised mine to 18 and bought my last city.

Pirate's Cove

Gili 34, Hillel 30, Orah 27, Nadine 27
Gili brought and taught this. There seemed to be an awful lot of dice rolling and combat from where I was looking. Nadine said the game was nice, but essentially a nice war game, with Eurogame chrome. Battles didn't eliminate your ships, just your cash, so it wasn't entirely war gamey.

October 17, 2007

Participants: Nadine, Yitzchak, David, Jon, Binyamin, Tal, Ginat

Game night was at Nadine's house, since I thought I would be late. I only arrived a little late, at 7:15.

Puerto Rico

David 62, Yitzchak 56, Nadine 47

They opted to play this as a starter game, promising to play quickly. It took an hour, which is quick enough, for them.

Havoc

Jon 30, Tal 28, Binyamin 24

Tal doesn't play heavier games, and this is one of her favorites. Or it used to be, until she realized that her strategy of always waiting to win the last two battles didn't always mean winning the game.

Binyamin won both the first two battles, but nothing more until we finished the first seven. Tal and I took 2 and 3 of the next battles, respectively. I was ahead in points now, but it came down to the remaining two battles. If either won both of them, they would win the game. If they split, I would still be ahead.

My hand was seriously depleted, so I wasn't in the running for the last two battles at all. Binyamin was convinced that he wasn't going to win either. He had the opportunity to simply not call Havoc at all, basically handing me the victory, since the eighth battle wouldn't be fought and the remaining points wouldn't be enough to beat me. But he didn't. They ended up each winning one battle, which gave me the victory, anyway.

Blokus Trigon

Binyamin+, Yitzchak
Binyamin brought this out as a filler game. Yitzchak had only once played the regular Blokus.

Princes of Florence

Yitzchak 72, Binyamin 63, Tal 54

They played on the fancy graphics new version in German. Jesters were selling cheap.

Power Grid: France

Jon 16+, Nadine 16-, David 13

End scores in Power Grid give you little information about how the game went.

This was our group's first time on an extension board. Nadine and David spent some time picking which country and provinces in which to ply, finally settling on Western France. We played with the correct France rules which tossed out the 13 plant, put the 11 in its place, and added more nukes to the initial setup.

Both of them had the opportunity to place cities on the board before me, and both chose not to take Paris fearing imminent enclosure. Instead they both placed right outside of Paris. I took Paris.

And after my fourth city build, I was enclosed. Despite this, I was earning more cash than either of them, which allowed me to jump across the board to mid-France, and then all the way down to the south coast.

Resources were in short supply. Coal went first. Nadine and I were sitting in Phase 3 with 13 cities each, to David's 10. He had plant capacity to power 15 cities, Nadine 13, and me 10.

All of us were able to take a 6 power plant, giving David 17 capacity, me 13, and Nadine 17. Except Nadine couldn't really power 17, since I kept running out the garbage fuel she needed.

In the last round, we finished all the big power plants, netting me a maximum power capacity of 16. There were no more plants I could get, so I was bound to lose if David could build the cities. Nadine tossed her 7 garbage plant, since she could never fuel it, and instead took the 50. So she was also now limited to 16 capacity.

The game had to end that round for me to win; otherwise David would just build 3 cities this turn, 4 the next, and power all 17. Luckily he wasn't able to get even to 16 cities in this turn, so I built to 17, being able to power 16 of them. Nadine could also build to 16, but had far less cash, even having to build one less city.

If you followed all that, you're a genius.

It's Alive

Binyamin 46, Yitzchak 42, Ginat 37

Binyamin find the new graphics gross.

Bridge

Jon/Yitzchak, Binyamin/Nadine
Yitzchak played two 5c contracts. The first he made. The second I jumped to 5c as a sacrifice bid over my his 2c bid followed by Nadine's 2h. Binyamin doubled, and Yitzchak redoubled. Yitzchak is still a bit new to the bidding game, and so didn't realize I was sacrificing; he thought I was powerful. And forgot that I had initially passed.

Turns out we only went down one. He had 7 clubs. And our opponents were cold for 5h, and might have made 6h.

October 10, 2007

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

Group attendance still light, but I don't mind. We still argue about what to play.

Power Grid

Ben 17+, David 17-, Adam 14

They played in the middle of the Germany board. Third phase seemed to come early, but there was a dearth of high-producing power plants. Some fierce bidding over the last plants, up to 130.

Ben won by cash. David expended his cash in order to beat out Adam to a plant, but it turned out that her didn't need to, since Adam wasn't going to be able to build enough cities. As a result, David lost to Ben in the cash situation.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

Binyamin 58/1, Jon 57/5, Nadine 73/6

This was a basic set collection game taught to us by Binyamin. It uses a lot of fancy components to built a palace for Cleopatra, including the entire box cover. So if your box cover rips, you're out a component. Although really the box cover is not necessary.

There are three piles of cards. Each turn you either take a pile of cards and add one card to each pile (the one you took from is now a single card). Or you meld your sets and earn points. As the palace gets built, less set types are available to meld.

Many of the better cards give you corruption points, as does going over ten cards at any point. Once or twice a game there will be a blind bid of victory points, with the highest player losing 3 corruption points, and the others gaining some more. Everyone loses their bid.

In the end, the player with the most corruption can't win the game. Of the remaining players, the one with the highest victory points wins. Tie goes to least corruption.

That's about it. The corruption point element and had size limit adds some nice decision making to the game. There are a bunch of other flavor mechanics adding details, some of which seem rather dispensable.

In our game, I was convinced I was losing the corruption count until midway, when I thought that Binyamin finally passed me. He managed to win both blind bids, however, and so reduced his corruption to almost nothing. In the end, he beat me by a single victory point. Nadine had more victory points, but she lost by a single corruption point to mine.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David+

I won a rare game sequence against David. We drafted from random cards. There are still so many of my later common cards that I just don't know that it's like opening fresh packs of a new expansion.

I somehow ended up playing blue/white, since I had enough fliers and creatures in them together with artifact creatures. I splashed black for a swampwalker and sunburst payments.

David played his usual Black and a second color red, because he managed to steal all the direct damage cards during the draft. Nevertheless, my deck was able to get out and get around defenses better than his could.

Bridge

Ben, Nadine, Binyamin, Jon/David

While playing Magic, David or I would fill in for the fourth hand in bridge. I didn't pay much attention to what was happening, however, and whenever it came to playing, the dummy would take over the hand.

Games Day: September 30, 2007

Participants:

Adam - club regular
Akiba - schoolmate of Saarya's
Ari - first time attendee from Jerusalem
Assaf - first time attendee from Jerusalem
Avi - David's son
Ben - club regular, my brother
Benjamin - friend of Elijah's
Coby - gamer from Rechovot; hosts game nights there
David - club regular; old friend of mine and my brothers
Elijah - club regular
Jack - infrequent club attendee since he started his own Russian-speaking game club in Jerusalem
Jon - me
Michael - infrequent club attendee; Elijah's father
Nadine - club regular; close friend of mine and Rachel's outside the club
Richard - attends game days only; an historical bridge partner of mine; likes Settlers, but otherwise only prefers classic games such as Bridge and Go; Richard brought me a whole bunch of classic game board and books as a gift
Saarya - infrequent club attendee, since he's in sleep-away school; my son
Seraphya - son of friends of ours; first time attendee
Shachar - son of same friends of ours; infrequent attendee
Shlomiyah - daughter of same friends of ours; first time attendee
Tal - infrequent club attendee; my daughter
Yitzchak - club regular
Yuka - friend of Jack's and attendee of the Russian club

Games Played:

Bridge x many

Played as a filler and ender by Jon, Richard, Nadine, Ben, and David.

Casbah

Adam taught this to Saarya, Elijah, and me. It is an elegant idea: pick tiles, place them, score points for what you've placed minus what you couldn't.

We only played one game, but I wasn't entirely sold on the idea. I really didn't like the drafting mechanism of the tiles wherein the best tiles are essentially taken in order around the table. I know I can find a better mechanic than that. And the principal of some times being harder to place than other tiles doesn't hold up, since they're all easy to place at the beginning and harder to place as you go on.

I have to read the rules myself and see if I'm missing something.

Adam won by a slight margin.

English rules are here. --Adam

Caylus

One of the long games played in the last several hours of the day; around four hours, I think, for a five player game. First plays for Michael and Shachar, but Yuka and Jack know the game from their club. It was late and Shachar was beginning to fall asleep.

Jack won with 72, Yitzchak was in second with 69, Michael 63, Yuka 59, Shachar 43.

Cosmic Encounter x 2

Elijah's favorite, and he played it twice.

The first time was with Ben, Saarya, and me. I had Oracle and Aristocrat, with which I was pretty happy. Ben had been unhappy with Empath, a power which we both think is underpowered, so we changed it to be that the Empath's opponent loses twice as much for failing to make a deal, which seemed to restore its balance. In any case, Ben never got to try it out, having all around bad hands as usual. Saarya and I earned a joint win.

The second time Elijah played with Saarya, Adam, and Yitzchak. Yitzchak won as the Philanthropist/Subversive. Adam had fun with the Witch.

El Grande

Played by Ben, Saarya, Nadine, and Elijah. Ben started off ahead after the first scoring round, 44 to 39, 38, and Elijah at 23. As a result, he was attacked and fell behind. As usual, even after he was behind he still got attacked, leaving Nadine to do her usual and take a soaring victory. Elijah also made a good comeback. Nadine won with 129 to 99, 99, and 98.

Go (19x19)

One of the games Richard plays, I don't know how this game went except that Adam won.

I beat him fairly easily, although he played well. We should have played with some handicap stones. --Adam

It's Alive x 5

Along with Bridge, this was the filler game of choice for the night. Some of our new visitors asked to pick up copies. Games played include: Nadine+, Saarya, Jon; Tal+, Elijah, Adam; Adam+, Elijah, Tal; Shlomiyah++, Seraphya, Shachar. All games played were the basic version.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation x 4

The two-player filler game of choice, apparently. Adam played and beat Elijah twice. Elijah played and beat Shachar, and Seraphya and Shachar also played.

Lost Valley

I was still keen on playing this game, so Saarya and Adam joined me. It was Saarya's first game. Previous games I've had were very different from each other, but this one was a splash in the face of disappointment.

I couldn't make money to save my life owing to the distribution of the tiles. Saarya took a lead in finding money and the explored continuously to run out the clock, a mechanic which I didn't like last time but now really hate.

Furthermore, the arrangement of the tiles and the rule about only one player allowed on a vertex at a time allowed Adam to block and entire area of the board simply by standing and moving back and forth whenever I tried to go around him, which simply makes no sense.

I'm glad this wasn't my first experience with the game. I really like the game, otherwise, and I need to find resolutions for these problems. I think one of the best resolutions is still my first proposed alteration to the game: each player starts with 2 gold nuggets, which eliminates the catastrophe of being shut out early.

Magic: the Gathering x 3

David and I got in a draft and three games of this. Both of us had very weak hands. Even though mine was weak, I thought it did have a little synergy. Still, David killed me handily in one game, lost the second due to mana screw, and came back to win the third from being down 20 to 2. I picked well in all three games, so there you go.

Power Grid x 2

Yitzchak introduced the game to Shachar, Seraphya, and Shlomiyah, and unsurprisingly won. This is David's favorite game, so he made sure to get a game in later with Ben, Nadine, and Assaf. This was Assaf's first game, and he came in a respectable second to Ben's runaway win.

Nadine: David complained the whole game about how poorly he was doing, but we didn't believe him because he always complains and always wins. But this time he was happy that losing vindicated him.

Princes of Florence

Yitzchak played David, Saarya, and Ben, and won 64 to 60, 57, and 52. Nothing unusual, except that a glass of water spilled on the game boards and cards.

Puerto Rico

Lots of members play this online, or with their own groups all the time, so they prefer not to play it also at the club. Still, I wanted to teach Ari, a newcomer to the game. Nadine and Adam joined us. Despite my best efforts, Nadine essentially gave up early and helped Ari. Ari flourished, as a result, and he won with 57 points to my 53, with Adam and Nadine trailing.

Nadine: I helped Ari by giving advice, which he did a good job of deciding when to take and when not to. And he essentially had a Tobacco monopoly, I got my Tobacco online much later, and only traded it once, and he got a Tobacco boat early on. I didn't realize that I probably should have produced and tried to trade Indigo instead of Sugar, and gotten a Large Market.

Settlers of Catan x 2

David, Nadine, and Avi played, but they appeared to get bored of it midgame. Still, Nadine won in the end.

Nadine: Sixes were rolled very often, as were sevens. That caused problems for me and David - I had no sixes, David had a lot, but kept losing cards to the sevens, which also cleared soldiers off my tiles. Avi received three times as many cards as we did, and would have won early on if he had listened to David and used his cards differently.

Coby, Akiba, Shachar, and Benjamin played this later in the day, one game that all of them knew how to play.

The Menorah Game

There remains a group of members of my club who prefer the original themed version to the remake It's Alive. So we played an advanced game of one of these. I won with a handy 50 points to Yitzchak's 37, and Saarya's 32.

Winner's Circle

Tal was very much keen to play this, and we taught first-time players Coby, Akiba, and Shachar. All appeared to enjoy the game. Shachar won to Tal's second place.

Yinsh

I played this with Ari when he first came in while we waited for another game to open up. I won.

Zendo x 2

Adam taught this to Jack, Yuka, Michael, and Shachar. They played twice.

September 19, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Yitzchak, Ben, Binyamin

Attendance is down still. Usually it goes up after summer is over. On the other hand, we are in the 10 days of teshuva, so maybe that's why. Hopefully.

Bridge

Ben, Yitzchak, Jon, Nadine, Biynamin

We started and ended the evening with Bridge games. I played or Binyamin played, depending on the timing.

Leonardo da Vinci

Jon, Nadine, Ben, Binyamin, Yitzchak

Binyamin brought and taught us this game. It seems like a dead-on Eurogame, with classic theme, set collection and area control, resource management, etc.

Like successive series' of paintings, each Eurogame brings the same elements but arranges them slightly differently, each exploring a unique combination of these same elements.

We only played one round before Ben complained that his head wasn't in it, but it seemed interesting enough. Binyamin warned, however, that the game becomes less interesting as it winds on and your choices become more constricted. Prince of Florence also winds on that way without any problems, so we will have to see.

Cosmic Encounter

Binyamin:Chosen/Zombie+, Nadine:Healer/Siren+, Yitzchak:Filth/Warrior, Jon:Wraith/Phantom, Ben:Changeling/Visionary

This was a rollicking good game. I didn't want to play with rotating powers and Binyamin didn't want to play with hidden powers, so we played with two open powers each.

I love the Seeker, but I discarded it in favor of Wraith and Phantom simply because of the strange synergy of these two. Ben's Changeling became the most feared power in the game, and therefore didn't hop around much. At one point I had it and had the opportunity to Changeling with the Filth, which would have destroyed a dozen or so bases, but regretfully decided to take Siren instead which I thought might actually let me win the game.

I Sirened and won a few times, but Ben Cosmic Zapped me twice in a row! and had a third one, too, just in case. Furthermore, when I did gain my fifth base, he took it out with a Wild Void card. And then Nadine Wild Schizoided my hex away from me leaving me one further less base. Sucks to be me.

Binyamin then went on for a potential solo victory against Nadine, but Yitzchak forced them to deal with an Emotion Control, and it ended instead with a joint win by the two of them.

Even with kingmaking and ridiculous luck, this game is just so different and fun every time.

September 05, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Yitzchak, Ben, Gili, David K, Dylan

Summer's about over and we're now back to a core group of people. A reminder: we all owe David money for dinner, as none of us had change.

Mississippi Queen

Yitzchak+, David K, Nadine, Jon, Gili

This game didn't look like much from the rules, and the "basic introductory game" looked like even less. We skipped straight to the full game. We started with three players and added others as they came in with suitable starting positions.

It turned out to be a neat and fun little planning game. I kept reading the rules and noticing things I got wrong. Since the game's rules are so simple, each little correction changed the tactics of the game for that particular turn. But the overall feel of the game itself didn't change.

There was thinking, not too much luck, yet it still moved quickly. By the end, most of us enjoyed it enough that we are willing to play again in the future. It's nice that the game can be shortened or lengthened by adjusting the number of tiles, and that handicaps are easily given.

Lost Valley

Dylan 20, Gili 9, Jon 8

This game continues to amuse me quite well, despite lots of squidgy rules issues, and despite heaps of luck that throw things around. Even with the luck, it's just fun to play. The game plays vastly different each time, and it's complicated. Again, thinking, without too much thinking.

I didn't fare well, as my fellow players turned out to be thieves. In once case, I built a mine and didn't manage to collect a single gold from it when the others swooped in and carted it off. We had a very short waterway as everyone headed away from the river. As a result, this was the first time that I bought a horse.

None of the forest tiles showed up until well after half the tiles were laid, which made collecting both food and wood at the same time relatively difficult. Dylan won having mined a mountain undisturbed relatively earl on.

Power Grid

David 15+, Ben 15-, Yitzchak 12, Nadine 9

They played on the East Coast, which should have made for a shorter game, but it wasn't. Phase three seemed to come early enough, however. Nadine hoarded all the coal and coal plants; nobody else was producing any, and she had three plants using 3 coals each.

As usual, they played with the critical variation of having the four upcoming power plants from the deck face up in a third row.

Bridge

David, Ben, Yitzchak, Nadine

They tried to play a hand of this while simultaneously playing Power Grid, which didn't work too well. However, they also played with passing three cards, ala Hearts, which they found amusing.

Jon/Nadine, Ben/Yitzchak

After Power Grid, we played 4 more hands.