Tony and I went round to Fiona's on Sunday evening. It was still quite light, and the table inside was mess, so we decided to play outside.
We start with a couple of hands of San Juan. In the first game Fiona and I are both into trading (she has Silver and Well, I have built Tobacco, Well, Aquaduct and Trading Post), whilst Tony is the odd man out, though he does have the strong Quarry & Carpenter combo. Fee and I then also both build Prefecture, to make Tony’s position look really bad, but he is fortunate enough to find the final one a few turns later.
I have the sort of balanced trading / violet position where I’m happy to find either Guild Hall or City Hall. I find a Guild Hall, so I close out with all production buildings. Tony doesn’t find a City Hall but does hit Triumphal Arch, a couple of monuments and Palace for a two point win over me. Fiona’s position looks awful but she has a final build City Hall to not lose by too much.
The second game is really weird. I get a first turn Poor House, and then proceed to rapidly build a collection of one cost buildings, triggering the poor House each time. I get to my eighth build four (!!!) buildings ahead of both Fiona and Tony. In addition to all my one cost buildings I have a Coffee for trading and a Chapel that is helping to keep me poor, effectively providing free victory points. Tony is amassing an okay (small) collection of violet buildings, but he has a Palace as opposed to a City Hall or Triumphal Arch, and that means I can close with a score of 22 for a 2 point win. I’ve never seen that strategy work in a three player before (and I’ve only seen it a few times in two-player). My draws during the opening turns were ideal – it seemed that every time the Poor House triggered the card I drew was another 1 cost building.
After that Fee wants to play something that will leave time for another game afterwards. Tony suggests Lord of the Rings (with F&F expansion), I foolishly describe it as a “one hour game” and we managed to talk Fee into it. This game of Friends and Foes proceeds much as the last one, we start with Sauron on 15, are never really in any danger of dying to 8 foes, and manage to skip Helm’s Deep and Shelob’s lair without too much trouble. In fact the four foes required to skip Shelob’s Lair are the last four in the deck, so under the rules as originally printed we would have won at that point. Instead we are playing the variant I saw suggested on BGG where we gain the Watchful Peace card when we kill all the foes. (Note that if we had been playing the official Black Gate variant this also would have lead to a trivial win – three of the last four foes re
The final board is only interesting as we manage to bugger up who is to be the ring bearer on the Mordor board, and I end with the ring, despite being the only one anywhere near Sauron, who is still on 14. Still we still have Gandalf’s Healing and the OOO Feature card, so we were never in too much danger, and sure enough we get near the summit, I put on the Ring and use Gandalf to automatically move four spaces, and we reach the summit and win.
Somehow Friends and Foes feels easier than the regular game. I think part of this is due to the fact that with Sam’s new ability and the new Gandalf card ‘Sauron does not advance’ you can effectively cancel three events, rather than just one. Gandalf cards that used to be quite important like ‘double wild’ and ‘draw four cards’ aren’t always needed any more.
Of course the game took much longer than one hour and by the end the light was failing badly (we were playing in the garden), which made it hard to see what was going on, which had a negative impact on the game I think. It’s hard for everyone to be involved when they can’t see what’s going on. Not a great gaming experience.
It’s getting late by then, so the only way we’ll have time for another game is if I stay outside and clear up LotR whilst Fee and Tony go inside, clear some room and setup something else. When I get inside they’re setting up Settlers of Catan.
I’d never played Settlers before, and based on this game I don’t particularly want to again. Trading & negotiation isn’t a mechanic I particularly enjoy, so for me it was just an hour of sitting around, rolling dice, occasionally trading when somebody made an offer that tempted me. My interest diminished even further during the game when it became apparent we weren’t going to finish in time, and I was in last place anyway. Sure enough we didn’t finish. A lame finishing to an overall sub-par evening. And we won’t be able to play for the next few weeks probably (more re-enactment events).
Friday, June 23, 2006
Friday, June 09, 2006
Sunday 04/06/06: Flea Circus, Lord of the Rings Friends & Foes, Starbase Jeff
Fiona was away again this weekend, but this time Bekki, Tony and I managed to get ourselves organised, and they come round for games on Sunday evening.
We start with a few hands of Flea Circus to get us in the mood. I win the first, Bekki wins the second when I call the gala show early but with poor cards, and I won the third. Over the three games Bekki actually has the highest score, but the rules don’t mention adding the scores, so I win 2-1 I guess? Either way Tony’s last.
After that we’re ready for something more serious, except Bekki wants to play something not too difficult that we’ve played before, cause she’s not feeling up to anything harder (I think she might have got a bit too much sun during the day). We settle on Lord of the Rings with the Friends and Foes expansion. I get out the Lord of the Rings box and then leave the room to make some more tea.
When I get back a few minutes later I find they’ve got as far as taking off the lid, removing the main board, Sauron and the One Ring. That’s it! So I spend the next five minutes setting up the game, and explaining the Friends and Foes additions. We start with Sauron on 15 (as is recommended when playing with F&F for the first time), Bekki is Frodo, I’m Sam and Tony is Pippin. Merry and Fatty get left behind again.
We failed to complete Bree, mainly because we had trouble avoiding get overrrun with foes after some [][] roles on the dice. We avert a complete disaster though, as I have a surfeit of Hiding Hobbit cards, so we are actually able to pay the 7 Hiding required to avoid @@@ on the final event. (Going straight from the Shire into a game board feel really weird the first times you play F&F – you’re so used to having Rivendell goodies when you face the first board in the regular game).
We just survive Moria, fleeing with the power of the Ring, just before things get too bad. At this point I as Sam, am incredibly corrupt (about 6 or 7) mainly because I keep taking damage to kill foes (I’m Sam after all so it seems best I do it), whilst Tony as Pippin has barely been corrupted at all.
During Isengard our plan is to clear out the Foes so we can skip Helm’s Deep & hopefully Shelob’s Lair. Killing off the foes is easy enough, but requires a bit of thought to make sure you end the board with exactly none in play. You wouldn’t want one to appear on the last turn and be unable to kill it, letting all your hard work go to waste. We avoid any such mishap, and are able to skip Helm’s Deep. This reveals four new foes, which Bekki, as the new Ring-bearer needs to kill off between boards to let us skip Shelob’s Lair as well. With the power of Gandalf’s Firestorm, this is achevied, and we skip Shelob’s Lair.
Coming into Mordor, nobody is looking too healthy, but we still have plenty of stuff left – enough shields to call on Gandalf several times, my power to cancel an event, and Bekki still has the OOO feature card in hand. It is apparent though that it would be trivial for us to gain a Military Victory – the four foes revealed when we skipped Shelobs Lair where the last four in the deck. I had mentioned previously that Military Victory was apparently too easy, and we all agreed that we would just ignore the foes for the last board (I couldn’t remember what the Black Gate card did exactly).
As it turns out we in fact have more than enough stuff to make it to Mount Doom, as we get most of the way and then I spot that Bekki can put on the Ring & call on Gandalf to take no damage and make the move four squares, which will bring her to Mount Doom, and the OOO card means she can’t die when trying to lob in the One Ring – so we win!
We end the evening with a couple of hands of Starbase Jeff. Supposedly this is a tile-laying / gambling game. It seems like it has some interesting mechanics, but fails to actually turn them into a game. That seems to be the conclusion of my geekbuddies as well, but a surprising large number of people seem to rate the game as one of the best from Cheapass (depending on your point of view that still may not mean much). Perhaps there is something there. Tony seems to always have it with him, so I’ll guess I’ll get the chance to find out soon enough.
We start with a few hands of Flea Circus to get us in the mood. I win the first, Bekki wins the second when I call the gala show early but with poor cards, and I won the third. Over the three games Bekki actually has the highest score, but the rules don’t mention adding the scores, so I win 2-1 I guess? Either way Tony’s last.
After that we’re ready for something more serious, except Bekki wants to play something not too difficult that we’ve played before, cause she’s not feeling up to anything harder (I think she might have got a bit too much sun during the day). We settle on Lord of the Rings with the Friends and Foes expansion. I get out the Lord of the Rings box and then leave the room to make some more tea.
When I get back a few minutes later I find they’ve got as far as taking off the lid, removing the main board, Sauron and the One Ring. That’s it! So I spend the next five minutes setting up the game, and explaining the Friends and Foes additions. We start with Sauron on 15 (as is recommended when playing with F&F for the first time), Bekki is Frodo, I’m Sam and Tony is Pippin. Merry and Fatty get left behind again.
We failed to complete Bree, mainly because we had trouble avoiding get overrrun with foes after some [][] roles on the dice. We avert a complete disaster though, as I have a surfeit of Hiding Hobbit cards, so we are actually able to pay the 7 Hiding required to avoid @@@ on the final event. (Going straight from the Shire into a game board feel really weird the first times you play F&F – you’re so used to having Rivendell goodies when you face the first board in the regular game).
We just survive Moria, fleeing with the power of the Ring, just before things get too bad. At this point I as Sam, am incredibly corrupt (about 6 or 7) mainly because I keep taking damage to kill foes (I’m Sam after all so it seems best I do it), whilst Tony as Pippin has barely been corrupted at all.
During Isengard our plan is to clear out the Foes so we can skip Helm’s Deep & hopefully Shelob’s Lair. Killing off the foes is easy enough, but requires a bit of thought to make sure you end the board with exactly none in play. You wouldn’t want one to appear on the last turn and be unable to kill it, letting all your hard work go to waste. We avoid any such mishap, and are able to skip Helm’s Deep. This reveals four new foes, which Bekki, as the new Ring-bearer needs to kill off between boards to let us skip Shelob’s Lair as well. With the power of Gandalf’s Firestorm, this is achevied, and we skip Shelob’s Lair.
Coming into Mordor, nobody is looking too healthy, but we still have plenty of stuff left – enough shields to call on Gandalf several times, my power to cancel an event, and Bekki still has the OOO feature card in hand. It is apparent though that it would be trivial for us to gain a Military Victory – the four foes revealed when we skipped Shelobs Lair where the last four in the deck. I had mentioned previously that Military Victory was apparently too easy, and we all agreed that we would just ignore the foes for the last board (I couldn’t remember what the Black Gate card did exactly).
As it turns out we in fact have more than enough stuff to make it to Mount Doom, as we get most of the way and then I spot that Bekki can put on the Ring & call on Gandalf to take no damage and make the move four squares, which will bring her to Mount Doom, and the OOO card means she can’t die when trying to lob in the One Ring – so we win!
We end the evening with a couple of hands of Starbase Jeff. Supposedly this is a tile-laying / gambling game. It seems like it has some interesting mechanics, but fails to actually turn them into a game. That seems to be the conclusion of my geekbuddies as well, but a surprising large number of people seem to rate the game as one of the best from Cheapass (depending on your point of view that still may not mean much). Perhaps there is something there. Tony seems to always have it with him, so I’ll guess I’ll get the chance to find out soon enough.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Update
I've been busy at work, and the home computer stopped working over the bank holiday weekend, so it's been a while since I've managed to write anything.
I managed to play a couple of games of San Juan against Matt during lunch hours at work last week, a couple of fairly easy wins.
I couldn't arrange any major boardgame sessions over the long weekend (Fiona away, two of the Matts doing DIY), so went round to see Matt Saturday evening for Beers & Games (Cider & Games in my case).
We started with a two-player Louis XIV. Two player seems a lot more relaxing than four player, as you can just play directly against your opponent without everyone else messing up your plans. And obviously the downtime is much reduced. I managed to complete one more mission than Matt, but he had way more shields, and took the win.
We then tried Babel, which I picked up in a trade recently. It didn't really grab either of us, we both blew some stuff up, got to the end of the Temple Pile, and that was that. Matt won. I suspect there must be a good game in there somewhere (my geekbuddies rate it highly), but I'm not sure I'll find it. I have too many other games I'd rather play two-player, so Babel has hit the trade list.
We finished with a game of San Juan, I got an awful start, everything I tried to do to get back into the game Matt countered (ie I build a Tower, his next build is Chapel), and couldn't find decent VP buildings. With some really tight play at the close I am able to force Matt to use his Crane to build both the City Hall and Triumphal Arch, to only lose by 13 points! (funniest thing all evening: Matt picks Builder, and build a Prefecture. I also build, and then Prospect. Matt says "well I have a Prefecture, so it's obvious what I do here", and picks Councillor. I keep both cards, Matt says "aren't you discarding one?" and I point to the Prefecture I built when he did! - he was so happy to supposedly have the Prefecture advantage, he didn't look at what I was doing).
After that I've had too much to drink for more games, so we sit around watching Scuzz until it's time for my bus.
Finally, last night, I was supposed to go round to Fiona's for some Carcassone: The Castle, and then "we might go the pub late on" (it's open mic night, and if you go late you miss the really awful singer), but it didn't quite work out that way. She & Pete got dragged to pub for dinner, so I met them there, and we ended up playing drunken Carcassone in the back of the pub at 11. And I won twice, which is unheard of for Carc.
I managed to play a couple of games of San Juan against Matt during lunch hours at work last week, a couple of fairly easy wins.
I couldn't arrange any major boardgame sessions over the long weekend (Fiona away, two of the Matts doing DIY), so went round to see Matt Saturday evening for Beers & Games (Cider & Games in my case).
We started with a two-player Louis XIV. Two player seems a lot more relaxing than four player, as you can just play directly against your opponent without everyone else messing up your plans. And obviously the downtime is much reduced. I managed to complete one more mission than Matt, but he had way more shields, and took the win.
We then tried Babel, which I picked up in a trade recently. It didn't really grab either of us, we both blew some stuff up, got to the end of the Temple Pile, and that was that. Matt won. I suspect there must be a good game in there somewhere (my geekbuddies rate it highly), but I'm not sure I'll find it. I have too many other games I'd rather play two-player, so Babel has hit the trade list.
We finished with a game of San Juan, I got an awful start, everything I tried to do to get back into the game Matt countered (ie I build a Tower, his next build is Chapel), and couldn't find decent VP buildings. With some really tight play at the close I am able to force Matt to use his Crane to build both the City Hall and Triumphal Arch, to only lose by 13 points! (funniest thing all evening: Matt picks Builder, and build a Prefecture. I also build, and then Prospect. Matt says "well I have a Prefecture, so it's obvious what I do here", and picks Councillor. I keep both cards, Matt says "aren't you discarding one?" and I point to the Prefecture I built when he did! - he was so happy to supposedly have the Prefecture advantage, he didn't look at what I was doing).
After that I've had too much to drink for more games, so we sit around watching Scuzz until it's time for my bus.
Finally, last night, I was supposed to go round to Fiona's for some Carcassone: The Castle, and then "we might go the pub late on" (it's open mic night, and if you go late you miss the really awful singer), but it didn't quite work out that way. She & Pete got dragged to pub for dinner, so I met them there, and we ended up playing drunken Carcassone in the back of the pub at 11. And I won twice, which is unheard of for Carc.
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