Gaming at San Jac....

Man, I wish they hosted gaming at noon every Saturday. I got there yesterday at 1230, and a few games were being played. I avoided a game of Power Grid to play something lighter. So I pulled out... drumroll... Fairy Tale! Yes the box is pink. Yes, it may not look very manly, but it is such a good filler. We played 2 games back to back.

Then I played San Juan and Roll through the Ages with Denise. I beat her by 1 pt in RTtA, but only because she didn't finish a 2 point monument before I ended the game.... so yeah, it doesn't feel much like a victory, but I'll take it (because winning so rare!). In San Juan, she beat me soundly (by 3 points?). It's makes for an excellent 2 player game.

Then I played 2 games of Pandemic. The game is a bit too easy on "Normal difficulty". Then we played "intermediate", and we did just as well. I think I'm ready to tackle the "Hardest" setting.

I ended the afternoon with a game of In the Year of the Dragon. I'm definitively a fan of the whole "damage control" mechanic.... the "cut your loses" mechanic while trying to expand, and score VP's.... I feel like I'm drowning the whole game. At no point do I feel overly powerful. That challenge is what brings me back to the game. Cool stuff.

Tons of gaming...

This week I had the chance to go both to the League City game night, and also hosted at my place. At cafe Express on Tuesday I got to play 2 games back to back of my fav card game, Race for the Galaxy. It seems that everytime I play with the new VP goals, I get 'distracted' and lose my pace. I lost both games. I think I prefer to play without them, but then again, I've played the game now 30 times, and they do add some variety to it. I also got to play Great Wall of China. Brent taught Mike and me. I won by grabbing some of the high VP tiles early in the game. Interesting filler.

On Wed at my place, I had the pleasure of hosting for Lewis, Mike, Denise, and Lance. We first played a game of Chicago Express. I finally can say that I am getting better at this game (and I better after 3 games). very interesting quick train game. Then we split up. Lewis, Lance and I played neuroshima hex. Cool scifi abstract game that might replace my Hive (which I think was originally Marty's opinion). Last but not least we played 2 games of Roll Through the Ages, a short and sweet Civ-lite dice game. It's civ, it's short (about 40min), and it's got dice. Perfect. Plus, it's kind of addictive. Since it's short, you can't just build everything in one game. You are going to have to play more times to try out different combinations of developments (which grant different abilities).

I can't make it tomorrow to the Fuddrucker's meetup... have fun! Next week I'm shooting again for Wed... I'll let you all know. Why the pic? Well, I thought it was funny, and I've always been a Street Fighter fan......Street Fighter 4 is coming out for the XBOX this month, and I can't wait to try it.

Wow...

What a long weekend of gaming. Tomorrow back to reality (work!). Hope everyone had a great Holiday break.

I'll post a small report of the things I got to play, and some thoughts on them. I won't be hosting his week. Must detox....

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.

Pitch Car, Sprain Muscle...

As seen at my place last Thursday...

We (JD, Lewis, Mike, Joseph) started the night with Pillars of the Earth with the nifty 5-6 player expansion. Wow, this new expansion really adds a lot without bogging the game down too much. Firstly, it make the game more replayable by adding more cards to the mix. In the original game, some types of the cards where present in EVERY single game making things easy to predict to some extent. Now, that's not the case. The expansion also adds additional action slots to use your master builder on, making your decision on where to place them twice as hard. And now that I've read the book since the last time I had played the regular game, it was even more enjoyable. Thumbs up from me.

With Lance joining the bunch, we all played Pitch Car on the living room floor. Nope, my table is not big enough when you add all the expansions. Someone sent me an email saying that their legs hurt the next morning from all the squatting to pitch their car... hehehe. It was pretty darn fun. Mindless dexterity games are a blast. I think you do get more precision when you are more comfortable playing the game on an actual table, but it was darn fun.

Last but not least, Lance, JD, Lewis and I played 2 games of the highly acclaimed Dominion. Not complex at all, easy to explain, quick, and addictive....what's wrong with that? Nothing IMO. Could play this 10 times in a row...


TODAY....I just finished my first game of solitaire Race for the Galaxy against the robot AND lost on the tire breaker!!! It was really my fault; I decided to change strategy midway, making me lose some steam along the way. In the category of solitaire games, I think this is better than solo-Agricola because your fake opponent accumulates cards AND scores LIVE. There's no preset score to beat. You have to actually beat a "preprogrammed robot" that plays its own actions, but also responds to what you do. Pretty darn nifty. It must have been a nightmare playtesting this sucker (the rules are pretty intricate, but become second-nature after 1 game). Looking forward to trying out some of the other expansion stuff.

All in all, a very satisfying week, specially when you play 4 out of (undisclosed number) of games and expansions previously purchased that I still hadn't tried.

Next week some of us are going to BGG con!!! YEAH! I'll try to post some stuff here.

Gaming last night... Agricola makes a come back...

Ignoring our patriotic duty to watch the debates once again, JD, Andy, Lewis and I met at my place to play some games.

Andy, JD, and I first played a game of Notre Dame. We had fun fighting each other to have the best 'developed' borough in Renaissance Paris. This one is in my personal top 10. The game is short (<1hr), but shock-full of painful but interesting decisions for such a short game. It combines some interesting, and not overused mechanics like card-drafting. It has something like worker placement, where you place a marker on a spot on the board, and it triggers an effect which we've seen before (Agricola would be the latest game sporting this mechanic). The twist lies in that the benefit gaines from said spot on the board is multiplied by the number of markers you already had on that spot. Sweet. At the same time you are allocating resources to prevent the rats from infesting (lose 2 VP's and a marker from the board) your burough (like the beggar card in Agricola, this is terrible, but not necessarily game-breaking).

Then we played Zooloretto when Lewis arrived. It was all the game is meant to be... fun, light. We used the 'disaster tile' expansion which makes the game too nasty for this kind of game, but it was still fun.

Then we pulled out Agricola. We played with the Interactive deck. That deck has some intersting cards. I squeeked a victory (although Lewis is doubting my math) with some interesting card combos.

Last but not least, we played San Juan. I think I can conclude that Race for the Galaxy, its close cousin, has jaded me. I can't play San Juan anymore. I'm terrible at it, because I'm trying to play it like Race for the Galaxy.... by giving priority to things that don't apply in San Juan. Oh well...

When Lewis left, JD and I played a quick game of Voltage. It's an interesting quick 2 player card game that combines 2 other quick and interesting 2 player card games (Lost Cities, Balloon Cup).

'til next time...

yeah for lighter games...

I love Agricola, don't get me wrong. But like I was telling the guys last night (Joseph, JD, and Lewis), this is one of those games that I agonize over. Every painful decision has to be measured carefully. There are few actions available per round, and just 14 rounds... definitively not enough to do all you wish you could do.

We played our first game using the K deck (the hard deck). To me, it felt almost like learning Agricola all over again. The powers are just a bit more complex, but not by much. The issue really lied in the fact that they were completely unfamiliar to all of us. By now, after 10 games or so using the easy deck, I recognize a large group of the cards, so formulating a plan isn't much of a pain any more (with the easy deck). Using the new deck was very challenging (ask Joseph who played almost all of his cards, but still had a hard time scoring points.... he was blinded by the sheer power of all the cards in front of him). I look forward to trying them out again at some point. I am glad to see though that they won't necessarily replace the easy deck: they K deck has nothing to offer that would make the easy deck look obsolete. It'll then just be a matter of being in the mood for either one of the decks. Fun stuff.

Then we played a bunch of lighter stuff. Race for the Galaxy (ok, not THAT light), Fairy Tale (as I've said before, my favorite filler), No Thanks (getting tired of this one given how much we've played it lately), Ra, and a game that JD brought that combines Crokinole with the game Sorry. It didn't seem like Sorry at all though, but it was fun and simple....perfect to be playing late at night. It definitively felt a bit more like Crokinole.

Someday I'll get a Crokinole board (Marty, where did you get yours?), and Pitch Car.... probably my 2 fav dexterity games. The only dexterity game I own is Bausack, but I haven't tried it yet....

A night of CLOSE scores

Last night we had a decent crowd: JD, Lewis, Joseph, Tom, and Andy. We split up into two groups.

Lewis, Joseph, and I played Agricola. It was a terrible game for me simply because I was working hard for this end-game scoring card thinking it was going to give me VP's for fields, when in fact it was for pastures. I realized this about 3 rounds from the endgame....needless to say, at little too late. Still, scores where somewhat close. I had 26 (urgh), And Lewis and Joseph were in the low 30's, with Lewis winning by a point.

Andy, Tom, and JD played Nefertiti, which I want to try someday, and Pirate's Cove, which I don't need to try. Hopefully someone will fill you in on these games.

L,J, and I then played 3 games of No Thanks, a great card filler.... probably my lightest filler. Not my fav though, but it's good. For that kind of 'filling', I prefer Fairy Tale, but only is everyone knows the game (so it can go fast). It looks like it's getting reprinted for the 3rd...4th time?

Some people had to leave, so then Lewis, JD, Andy, and I played Space Dealer. I like this game a lot because it reminds me of Real-time Strategy computer games like Command and Conquer, Warcraft, etc. After Lewis gave me much grief over the rules review, we fought out way trying to deliver goods accross the cosmos. As always, it was a blast. I'd like to try it again with some of the expansion/variant cards (and probably without Lewis... because he doesn't like luck in games, and he doesn't like to keep track of the score during the game, when it is supposed to be done like that.... I wouldn't have made deliveries to his planet if I could see that he was winning....)

Then more people left, so JD, Lewis and I decided to play something lite like Liar's Dice. So we played Phoenicia (which for those that don't know, is anything but lite). Again, it was an extremely close match with me and Lewis fighting until the very end for the win. He beat me by just 1 point. Oh the agony. This is probably one of my all time fav games (definitively in my personal Top 5). It's a heavy game that plays in 1 hr, which to me is just icing on the cake.

Gaming last night... Now Agricola-FREE!

Last night was your regularly scheduled League City gamers meetup. The crowd was small and cozy....about 7 total?

I played a few fluffies like Circus Flohcati x2, and Fluxx (urgh!). Of the lighter stuff, Hey That's my fish was the best. It's a great quick 15 min brain-teaser, where you are moving penguins around ice flows trying to catch the most fish. Denise, a guy whose name escapes me, and I played this. My penguin got locked out on the third to last round, isolated on ice flows that weren't connected to the others....so I ended up in 3rd place.

The Heavy of the night for me was Caylus Magna Carta...also played with Denise, and 'the other guy'. Excellent, excellent game. It's the 'essence' of Caylus in a quick 45-60min deep card game. I won, but only because I was the only one who had played before (read, the only one who built a Prestige building...the ones that give you bucketfuls of VP's). I'm sure next time it'll be different.

It was an Agricola-free night. Yes, fun can be had without Agricola.

Last night... more Agricola.

Last night we had 4 and yours truly... Mike, JD, Lewis (he's back), and Ben (for his second time... good to see you again).

First game of the night was Agricola. We are still sticking to the 'easy' cards. Still after 5 games using the same cards, I find new cards and combos I hadn't seen before. As a 5 player game, I think the game runs a bit too long for my taste. I'll probably stick with the 4 or less player games if possible, BUT I won't turn down a 5 player game either.

Then we did 2 games back to back of Liar's Dice. Mike and Lewis left after this, as we moved on to the fluffy games of the night. Ben, JD, and I played a game of Kill Dr Lucky, and Gloom... both very goofy games, not my usual cup of tea, but still very entertaining. Some cards in Gloom reminded me a bit of Munchkin, so I wasn't super excited about those. Still the game is great for what it is: a simple take that game with a goofy dark theme. I'm curious to try Dr Lucky with more players.

Feed your people, people!

Last night we had an impromptu game session (sort of impromptu). Lance, Andy, me and my lovely wife played Agricola. It was my first 4 player game. I played with 5 last year once, but I can't remember the details of how it went. Needless to say, it was a blast. This game scales extremely well; it's good with any number of players.

Like the respect you have for an old war veteran, I can't just remove Puerto Rico from its rightful spot in history. Yes, it is aged, but like good wine, it retains its value with the passage of time. Still, I can't STOP thinking about Agricola, all the possibilities, the past few game sessions, the things I could have changed, the things I could have done better.... it has possessed my brain. On my way to work today, I thought about Agricola. On my way back, Agricola. On my way back home from dinner with my wife we discussed strategy in last night's game...

The game we had last night was the 5th for me, 2nd for my wife, and first time for Andy and Lance. I felt cocky and made a risky move before a feeding round, that left me without enough food for all my family members. Like other games that have risk management (In the year of the dragon, Notre Dame, etc), besides scoring VP's, you have to allocate resources/time/etc to prevent some bad thing from happening. In this game, it's feeding your family every few rounds. Well, right after a round that I had a baby, I was short by 1 food (adults need 2 each, baby 1). Every food you are down by costs you 3 VP's at the end of the game.

I took a gamble by growing my family on a round that I knew that action was going to leave me short of food..... and sure enough, I lost to Lance by LESS than 3 points (in other words, I would have won if I had fed my family well that round). Oh well. He did have a very impressive Animal Farm, that was on par with my Autopilot Bakery... but that penalty cost me the game. Oh the agony...

With so much replayability, I can see this game becoming a dime fairly quickly. In less than 2 weeks, it made it to my nickel list. :)

BTW, I'm planning on hosting next week on Tuesday. Mark your calendars.... Surprise surprise...there might be some Agricola.

The art of war....

JD and I started things off with a game of To Court the King. He took control of the King and Queen. I made a decent comeback mustering enough dice to try to beat his eight 6's, but unfortunately he did a great job taking control of all the good dice controllers...so I wasn't able to manipulate my dice enough to beat that. Fun, quick, great as always.


Then we moved on to the main event, along with Tom and Andy. We played Shogun....a LONG game of Shogun. Too long for my tastes, but it was still very enjoyable. First half of the game saw JD running away with it by quite a bit, due to some very nice construction work (temples, castles, etc). I lost an important scoring region that I originally stole from Andy, due to bad timing. Oh well. For the second year, I focused on less fighting, and more recovering from the previous year. JD and Andy were at each other's throats (they were 1st and 2nd place). Andy eventually took the lead, and won. JD and I tied for 2nd, but JD in theory won 2nd (tie breaker is money). Fun game, great theme, cool cube tower, but prone to AP the first time you play.

Then Tom and Andy left. JD and I played a quick game of Dungeon Twister. It's a combination of an abstract puzzle game, with "abstract mechanics", and a fantasy theme (wizards, spells, warriors, etc). Very interesting. Has more depth AND more theme than I expected.

Ok, back to work now.

Gaming Princesses Acquire Florence

//I have been working on this write-up for a while now, but since the last sentence was predictive I had to work it into a form to post here, the original is on MySpace/

So Tuesday night(a couple of weeks ago), at my League of Extraordinary Gamers boardgaming meetup, (http://boardgames.meetup.com/564/ join us if you haven't) , I got there at seven o clock, and began to teach a really light game to five people when Tammy and Adam showed up.

So I had to figure out how to break up the group. Mike showed up with Acquire which I have been wanting to learn, since it is the 54th highest ranked game on BoardGameGeek.com, and Tom wanted to play it so we moved to our own table...and a few minutes into the rules Dana showed up, but the other table had 5 people already so she joined us in learning Acquire.

Acquire went really well...money kept flying my way even though I did not seem to be doing too much to earn it. I finished in a strong second place. I am not sure if it is a good thing that I can do well in such a money management game relying on my intuition, hehe...its probably not, but its fun anyway to put my Accounting intuition to work anyway.

Meanwhile, I told the other group to play something they could teach...I was basically talking to Tammy and Adam, they brought a version of Settlers of Cataan that I have not played (Starship, probably) some light games, and Princes of Florence. And you serious gamers will be happy to know that they played ...Princes of Florence (Denise and Tommie enjoyed it enough to ask for a rematch).

So it turns out that my group of gaming princesses will play and like heavier games. Two of them really like Puerto Rico, and another confessed that for a while she was hiding her inner gamer...another regularly beats her husband at medium weight games.

But we finished Acquire 30 minutes till 10:00, which is when Mark closes up shop, so I got to play my fluffy game after all, Zirkus Flohcati.

So all of you serious gamers should not come out to my events, if you are afraid of being beaten by a girl.

Beware of the newbs!

Last night was your regularly scheduled interruption to the weeknight gaming at my place.... the League City Meetup. :)

Once again, there was a strong showing (about 10?). All kinds of light games were played, but a good deeper one was played too. I played R-eco with Tommie, Denise, and Joseph who very surreptitiously stole Marty's spot. Great recycling-themed card game for 3-4 (5 is too many, too chaotic). While we were doing this, there were some card games being played at the "other table".


Then we moved on to the Biggie of the night: Power Grid. We played with 6 players, all of them either newbs or VERY rusty from lack of experience (like me). The game surprisingly only took us about 2hrs to play. For those who don't know, in this game you are trying to establish your little "energy empire": players represent energy companies that are competing to supply electricity to different cities accross Germany. It's not THAT old, but it's one of those TRUE gems in euro gaming that will be around forever.

So we were all pretty much hanging in there in the same peloton for most of the game, until the very last round where Denise, a Power Grid newb, purchased AND powered like 4 new cities in one go as she triggered the end game. Note to the others on the table: beware of the player who goes after all the windmills, saving lots of money that can be used to build houses, then goes on to buy a couple of highly efficient nuclear plants that will cover the player until the end game.... This strategy is just a ticking bomb because of all the money saved from not buying resources. We'll never let it happen again!!!!! Well-played. :)

I made 2 very obvious mistakes... not that they would have given me the victory, but would have saved me from being tied for last. We were going at a pretty good clip to try to finish before the coffee shop closed after all....( yeah yeah, excuses excuses....)

After the store closed, I felt bad that JD drove 1 hr to get to Coffee Culture only to play one game, so the gracious person that I am, I sacrificed myself by inviting him over to my place to play some MORE games. So we got home, and broke out his new copy of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects. I was able to convince my lovely wife (by bribing her with cooking dinner, being a good husband, bathing the dog, etc... the things we do for gaming) to join us in a 3 player game of this. Cool light-medium weight game, with cool theme and mechanics that go well with it. It's not a buy for me (mainly because I have TOO many games), but it's very fun. Players are essentially architects racing to build monuments for Cleopatra. They can "cheat" by using some "evil" powers, but this scores corruption points for the player... and if you have the most corruption markers at the end of the game, you lose (cough... like JD,.... cough). Interesting mechanic that works well in a short quick game like this. I would think it would be a terrible idea in a longer/deeper game.

Then we (JD, and I) played a quick game of Knights, yet another dice game where you influence stuff that gives you stuff, to help you claim stuff. As a dice-lover, this game was 'ok'. I think I'll stick with Airships, To Court the King, etc, but I won't turn down a game either.

Next week you ask? I'll probably host on Tuesday. Stay tuned kids...

A vow of silence...

Last night I was ready for a 2 player game fiasco with Joseph, but ended up pleasantly surprised to see Lewis (who called at 7pm), and JD (who was a 'maybe'). Joseph and I played a game of Hive. It's an excellent quick (10-15min) 2 player abstract, that tastes like chess, but without the extra calories. Oh, and btw, it's the secong game from the left on the title image for this blog that I made on photoshop.

We started with a game of Glory to Rome, where Lewis had an unstoppable free-energy powered VP engine and easily trounced us all.....so that wasn't fun.

Then, Lewis craved Tichu, which we were all interested in (it's one of my recent acquisitions), but I had a slightly stronger interest in the new tile-laying game, Monastery. Joseph suggested playing this first before Tichu (which never happened...).

So in Monastery, players represent a group of Monks of a color, that is trying to build a monastery with different buildings, gardens, paths, fields and such around a large central Abbey. Players also gain points for praying in certain buildings, for working in toil buildings, and studying in study buildings. These points are then used to buy/recruit more monks to your team, AND buy letters which are needed to complete the last sentence of the "Our Father" in latin. Yes, you read it right. Needless to say, I was intrigued when I heard the very unique theme. So these letters then become VP's. Add a dash of screw-your-neighbor mechanics, and a bit of luck, and you basically got it.

We played one game that consisted of literally almost 2 rounds. Everyone had a taste of the mechanics, and unanimously decided to restart the game: many had made slight mistakes that were just hard to see if you'd never played before. The second game went well into the third quarter, but we had to end it prematurely because Joseph had to leave. So JD and Lewis were feeling enlightened and blessed and twisted my arm into playing a 3 player game of this. It went by super quick (after all, it was technically our third go with the game). It's amazing how the board changes with each game. By no means SUPER deep, but it's full of interesting decisions, screwage, and luck to keep me interested. The theme and mechanics work REALLY well together.

Then Lewis left, and JD and I finally got to play a game of Soccer Tactics World. JD's team just pummelled my guys to the ground with a score of 3-0 after two 30 min halves. My strikers had various chances for the goal, but it just wasn't their night. I demand a rematch.

Once again, it was a great night of gaming. See ya next week at Coffee culture. Joseph, I'll bring Power Grid.

I'll have my whiskey to go please...

Last night we had a nice crowd: Scott, Ben (The American Pirate), Joseph, JD, and Marty. S, J, JD, M, and I started playing Canal Mania planning to be done by the time Ben got there, but unfortunately he got there 1hr earlier, so he played a spectator for over 1hr (thanks for hanging in there man).

In Canal Mania you are competing to build the best/longest canals, and making the most profitable delivery of goods to the cities in 18th-19th century England. If you like Ticket to Ride and Railroad Tycoon (or Age of Steam), you are pretty much guaranteed a good time. We had a very hard-fought battle with surprising swings in scores, but in the end Marty beat my lead by having a canal monopoly in the south east corner of the map (becoming the sole profiteer of all the goods cubes in that section... he didn't have to share the income for using other players' canals). Nice.

Then Marty and Joseph left before they turned into pumpkins. Ben joined in. So we played JD's copy of Bootleggers. Pretty fun theme (mobsters controlling speakeasies in the Prohibition era), and good area control mechanics. JD, Joseph and I had played before, and my opinion at the time was "It's fun, but it should be better with more players". And it was. Eventhough we (cough...JD...cough) were rusty with the rules, it was still a fun game. It's definitively better with more players. The only thing that made it sort of painful (to me at least because I could have won earlier), was the fact that the game could have ended ~30min before it did if we had played it with the right game-ending conditions. Trimming the extra 30min would have made it even better (specially because it was starting to get late... 1230am... but we pushed on).

At 1230, we pulled out the obligatory "role-selection" game, Race for the Galaxy. It was Ben's first time, and JD's first SLAUGHTERING of all of us. He absolutely destroyed us, using a military strategy WITH both 6-cost developments that provide bucketfuls of VP's for Military strength/planets. It was ridiculous. His score was 37; the rest of us were in the low 20's?

We finished RftG at 1:30am, and Scott's "Hey Ben, now that you know how to play, we can do another quick run of it in 30 min" almost twisted my arm enough to sit down and play again, but we were all tired at this point...and duty was going to call early the next day (today).

All-in-all, it was another great night of gaming. BTW, I got some new games: Monastery (Ragnar Brother's new game), Tribune (an interesting twist on the now tried and true worker placement mechanic...with an ever cool Roman setting), Pillars of the Earth expansion, and Tichu (which I've only played twice, and I think I like it). And btw, the Shogun that I want to bring to the table, is not the classic Milton Bradley Shogun (Scott, Joseph, and I were talking about how they compared).

BTW, yes, I did make the banner (using Photoshop). Joseph asked last night.

Last night's gaming... less fluff, more game!

Ok, so most of the guys that have registered here were actually at Coffee Culture for the meetup, so this will be brief. Just a few thoughts:

1. I was impressed with the number of people that showed up. Nice job Joseph

2. I potentially gained 2 recruits to the weekly sessions at my place. yeah!

3. Playing with none hardcore gamers is refreshing: it reminds me that in the end, it's really all about the fun.

4. The fluffy games I tried were quite enjoyable....except for Snorta. Like Jungle Speed, my reflexes just suck, so I get my butt kicked easily in these kinds of games.

5. Kingsburg, the only medium game I tried, really needs an expansion. Last night was my 5th game, and I basically confirmed that there's really only 3 possible solid winning strategies (church track, embassy track, and lots of dice mods to get the queen as much as possible [who gives you 3VP's each time]). The Dice Despot that I am, I still enjoy it, but last night was the first time I was bummed by this.

Next week I'll probably be hosting on Wed 7/2. Mark your calendars.