Unfortunately I can't make it tomorrow to Cafe Express. I do need to get my game on, so I'm hosting on Wed at 7pm. Just recently picked up Small World, Confucius, and Cutthroat Caverns. If we do 2 of three, I'll be happy.... easier than doing 4 of seven according to the Rockets.
37 comments:
Wednesday looks good to me.
Sorry but with gaming tonight and all weekend I can't make Wednesday. Should be a good turnout tonight!
Well, i think I'm going to cancel for tomorrow (nothing against you Joseph, but I do have a presentation on Thurs that I should be finishing up tomorrow). I am working instead on convincing the wife that 'it is ok' to go gaming on a Fri night (San Jac). I won't be able to make it for the rest of the weekend, but if i can at least go on Friday, that would be great.
Anyone else going to be there on Friday?
Not Friday but as much as possible on Sat. and Sun.
Awesome turnout on Tues. even though it was posted late.
Has anyone tried playing the new computer version of Le Havre? I have been waiting a couple of months for it to be added to the BGG but I can't get it to run on Vista.
Nope, haven't seen the PC Le Havre.
I'm going to try to be at San Jac tomorrow at 5pm if anyone is thinking of going earlyish.
I should be there by 5.
My Calendar opened up a bit and I should be able to play games tonight (Friday). I will aim to be there just after 5, and looking forward to seeing you folks!
Is this San Jac place easy to find? I have never been there before and I will use the address off the Meetup meeting about it. Any advice regarding parking, or other relevant info?
Peace
Brent, Glad you will be able to make it. A couple of things to be aware of. The parking is not directly next to the building where gaming is, so you have to walk a couple of minutes to get there.
Parking is along Cunningham Drive in either lot 3 or lot 5 if you look at the map link on the meetup announcement:
http://www.sanjac.edu/campusmaps/central.swf
As for finding the campus itself, that is not too hard, I think.
I finally broke down and got a google account so I can leave comments here. I plan to be there at 5.
Now I'm Mike. All is right with the world.
Sweet. So there will be a pretty good showing. Godd because again, unfortunately, I can only go today. This "mini con" is excellent, for those that have never gone.
Brent, what happened? Hope you didn't get lost... :)
Denise, I plan to be there by 10am after all on Saturday.
Unfortunately my calendar closed up again. I apologise for missing last night, I really did want to go and had plans to go. A situation popped up that I had to accomodate. Life just sometimes gets in the way.
I know the feeling....I am dealing with a sick one at home this am.
Marty, I will try to get there at 10 am but might be closer to 11.
Hope you all had fun at San Jac... I don't know that I can make it tomorrow to Cafe Express. On call tonight...
Anyone up for gaming Wed at 7pm at my place?
I'm leaving for Austin on Wed. night, so I once again will have to miss Rob's gaming. I can make it to Cafe Express tonight after all, though, so see some of you there. I should be there by 5-5:30.
Thanks for hosting Rob. A great time as always. Confucius says gaming is good for you! :-)
Ahhhh....Confucius.... how I love to hate thee. I will be writing a casualty...I mean...session report about the game, tonight.
Always a pleasure to have everyone over...except for Lewis and Marty who always win.
:)
I have to say that you and Lance didn't do bad at all! Great 'casulty report'. I think the thing that surprised me the most was how hard we worked for 3 hours to have the game soooo close. You really find out who your friends are and also who is most likely to 'regift'. :+) Great game!
Whicj game were you folks playing?
Peace
was whatever game you played as close as the E&T game on Tuesday?
Brent and I tied(!!!) at 8-8-9-9 and Doug had 8-8-8-9 for his score.
Confucius. It wasn't just the closeness of the score but the fact that it took ONE HOUR just to go over the rules and THREE HOURS to play to only have a diffence of a couple of points. I was up to 2am retracing my decisions. Poor Joseph showed up at 9:30 thinking we would be done only to find out we were only 1/3 of the way. I 'think' we had 2 more rounds(out of 9) left at 11 and Lewis figured out he could win and triggered an early end.
3 hours and that was an early end? Wow. the 'Geek say 100 minutes for the game. Is that just wrong?
That was a very close E&T Game.
Rating on Confucius? Thumbs up, thumbs down?
Inquiring minds wanna know.
Peace
There is sooo much to concentrate on that you tend to 'over think things'. The next game will definitely be alot faster. We also had to refer to the rules a few times. Everyone also picked up the importance of giving gifts pretty fast for a first game and picked up extra actions on the very first round. My downfall was not getting enough money at the start.
DEFINITELY a thumbs up but I wouldn't want to play it again right away. The alarm went off at 4:30am and I stayed up until 2 am retracing a few of my 'blunders'.
You do find out who your friends are pretty quickly!!!!
As I remember, Lance won that game, not me.
I think a second playing of the basic game would be under 2 hours. This game has a "lost until you get it" quality that definitely slows the game when everyone is lost.
I give the basic game thumbs up and the advanced game thumbs down.
The game has a clever gifting mechanic with a serious screw-thy-neighbor element. You are beholden to whoever has given you the best gift and MUST support them in certain, very common, circumstances. If you are not beholden to any particular person in a conflict, you must still support one of them, but you choose which one.
The advanced game lets you give gifts directly to the emperor, who then helps you in a way that harms another specific player. This addition makes it almost a pure screw-thy-neighbor game. When I look back on things I could have played better, they aren't plays that help me directly but rather my failure to negotiate my help in harming another player.
Imagine I'm player A. I see C & D fighting over something. I may play kingmaker, and, in many cases, I MUST play kingmaker between C & D. The key thing is to see where you, A, are fighting B over a different resource, see which of C & D can help you there by harming B, then negotiating with C &/or D to kingmake the CD fight so that person will, in turn, kingmake the AB fight.
The advanced game has the potential to turn into a long pure negotiation game. If the winning strategy always involves wheedling other players, there will be a lot of wheedling.
In the game we played, a key area Rob had been dedicating the bulk of his resources to was decided on turn 7 (of at most 9 turns in the game). Rob went from a comfortable 8 points in that region down to 0 points because it was in everyone's best interest to whack him. This is in a game where the high score was 20 and the scoring track only goes the 30.
I like the basic game and the gifting mechanic. The advanced game addition, in my opinion, breaks the basic game.
The game is great. I spent so much time thinking about it afterwards, specially about the blunder that cost me the game, that I had to sit in front of the computer last night at 1:30am, to type some thoughts on BGG. I have some more that I want to add...
Besides talking about my screw-up, I summarized why I enjoyed the game so much: it is complex, with tons of decisions and things to fight over...and add to that the the brilliant gift-giving system which leads to oh-so-sweet screw-your-neighbor moments (but not turning the game into a simple take-that game).
I'm SURE we can bring the time down to at least 2:30hr, specially if playing with 4, AND not adding the Advanced game stuff. I would like to play it again sooner rather than later because the pain is still fres.... I learned a lot from this game. Maybe Midnight Comics this Saturday (if it is this Saturda)?
I don't think Midnight is this weekend. It should be the 6th. sounds like a game I would like, unfortunately, I'm out of town this weekend doing fundraising/bicycling. :)
Lewis, you must have posted when I was typing up my thoughts.
Good points. I wouldn't mind playing the "basic" game (which is not basic at all...it just doesn't have these more directly confrontational actions), or even the advanced game again. And again, it is important to point out that I lost those points because of my own actions. AFTER I screwed up, then came the fallout that followed (2 more bad things that happened to me that secured my last place).
And in case you all were wondering, my issue was that I ignored the extra screw-your-neighbor powers that the gifts provide (which is what the "Advanced" game brings to the table). So once I made a crucial mistake, Lewis pounced by using one of these gifts he had available, to exploit my crappy move (which wouldn't have been as crappy in the "basic" game).
I liked Confucius. I'll play it again. I'd prefer the basic game, but I'll give the advanced game another shot.
I may have misjudged the advanced game, but I don't think so. There are many basic game actions which are of the form "help me" and a few of the form "take X from player Y and give it to me". All the extra possible actions added by the advanced game take from others. Further, they make it much easier to undermine someone else's position. I think this will tip the balance into a pure "screw-thy-neighbor" negotiation game, even after multiple plays.
I believe a second playing of the basic game will be under 2 hours, even with 5 players. There will be more actions per turn, but fewer turns in the game.
The game has 3 areas with officials that can be bribed. An area has at most 7 officials and will have all 7 by the start of turn 5. In a turn in which all 7 officials have been bribed, that area is resolved and points are scored for it. When all 3 areas have been resolved, the game is over.
Since you get a meaningful game benefit for having at least one bribed official in an area, and a different benefit for each area, it's reasonable to expect all players to have at least one bribed official in at least 2 areas very quickly. In a 5 player game, I expect at least one area to resolve on turn 5. All might resolve on turn 5 (thus ending the game). I would expect a 5 player game to end on turn 6, and I'd be very surprised if the game went past turn 7.
Wow, Denise was up until 1:30 retracing some of her decisions Rob was up until 2:00 typing up his thoughts. This sounds like a game I ought to try!
This kind of buzz sure peaks my interest.
Peace
Lewis: Agreed. I actually read some posts that talked about games ending in rd 5. I think they were indeed 5 player.
Oh, I would play again but I have a totally different view on the advance option. I think it might be necessary in some groups where someone is 'stealing the game'.
At one point I was literally out of the game after Rob bumped me out of 2 spots in the ministries. I was sitting on gifts from every player in front of me so I could not get back in without wasting 3 actions to trash 3 gifts. With 3 gifts I could not win a duel and bump into a prime spot. I had some prime spots, had bought several gifts, had my ships and was working on my army and all of a sudden I had no chance of recovering. The advance cards got me second in 2 ministries. It got me back into the game. I do agree that playing your first game without it might be best. Just a diva's point-of-view! ;-)
BTW, for the naysayers who were mocking me... "lets mollify Robert" (by following the rules as written!!! for those who didn't attend)....
This is Tom Lehman's explanation as to why you skip a player when passing the phase markers in the 5 player game of St Pete. Ok, the explanation is lame, I'll give you that. But, how hard is it to just follow what the designers deemed best for the game?
Disclaimer: Note that I am a shameless Tom Lehman fan. Race for the Galaxy is the most played game in my collection since I started recording plays over 1yr and a half ago.
Rob,
We didn't mock you because double passing the markers seemed convoluted and unnecessary. We mocked you because mocking you is fun.
I think it's great that the game designer responded so quickly with a clear explanation as to the rationale. I agree the explanation is lame, but it's clear and understandable.
I wouldn't expect any less... once I made it clear that I am addicted to pimpimg and sleeving/laminating my games.
sigh.... I'm going to miss this group.
We are going to miss you as well Rob. Hopefully you will make frequent trips back for a game or two.
Peace
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