Gaming last thurs... bunch o' games

This week JD, Gaming Diva, Lance, and Marty swung by for some gaming. We started things off with a game of Stone Age (JD's game). It's one of the more recent worker placement games, where players are racing to develop the best stone age clan/family/posse... I tried a completely different strategy this time around (my second game), and fared much better. Still Marty ran away with it with his super score from artifacts that only he seemed to be willing to pay anything for. Oh, and he denied me out of spite, 28 points. No, I'm not bitter...nope...

Then we played a half game of Coloretto. Ironically it was the game of the night that we most had to go back to the rules for. We played two full games. I hadn't played it in over 1 yr, so it was refreshing to see this light filler again.

Postobello Market was next (JD's game). In this game players are rushing to place markets down on the board, almost a la Ticket to Ride sans cards, but avec a 'special pawn' (because I forgot the goofy name cops in England have) that marks the available spots on the map where you can play. It also has a variable actions per turn mechanic that works well. JD REALLY schooled us on how play well.

Denise and Marty had left by this point (11p'mish), so I suggested After the Flood, the 3hr-long meaty 3 player game by Martin Wallace. Of couse, I was kidding...or was I? So I pulled out King of Siam, which works really well with 3. It's one of my fav types of game: hard painful decisions EVERY single round, area control, short playing time (~40min). In this game, players are trying to spread the influence of 3 factions that are trying to gain control of Thailand and surrounding territories in the 1800's.... yeah! FUN! Seriously though, the game is good. To win, players themselves need to have the most influence on the party that has the most influence on the board. Now that I think of it, it feels like a lightning multiplayer 1960 The Making of the President (specially because you need to play cards to manipulate influence on the board)....even more reason to like this game. Oh, and Lance schooled us on this one by 'attacking' towards the end of the game, when JD and I were completely powerless.

We then played 2 games of Race for the Galaxy with the new cards and goal VP tiles. I don't know how I feel about the goal tiles. They seem 'distracting'. The way I usually play is by looking at my starting world, starting cards, and going with the flow generally falling into a military, produce/consume for the VP tokens, or settle/develop stragey. The goal cards don't always go with my choice of these three. I learned that if you want to do well, you may need to readjust your strategy to try to claim some of these goal tiles. Needless to say I struggled to claim them, specially in the second game when I was going for a military strategy, and the goal cards were none aligned with what I was going for. They were better for a settle/develop strategy, which Lance was going for, and beat us with. Using them is refreshing, but I'll probably continue to play most of my games without them. It is still a great expansion for the extra cards and the very very nifty solitaire game.

Last but not least, we finished the night with my fav filler, Fairy Tale. Lots of fun was had as usual. It's becoming less rare for these game nights to end after 1am... with the right gaming group, that is fine with me.