Game Night 9/9/11

This week's game night was our largest yet, with 14 attendees total. Half of us played a quick game of Say Anything while waiting for the other half to show. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, though the game is very light. I sell Say Anything as a more creative & interesting version of Apples to Apples, which I feel is a fair comparison.

Once the majority of players had arrived we jumped into Werewolf, since the game plays so well with large groups we felt that we should be sure to get a game or two in. In retrospect, I really wish we had been able to play some actual strategy games, but since the Werewolf games went very long, we didn't have the time for anything else. Next time we'll either have to start with strategy games or just make sure our sessions of Werewolf are much more concise! Giving this situation some further thought, I feel that there were two primary factors contributing to our overly lengthy and occasionally frustrating Werewolf games.

1. Though Werewolf is increasingly interesting with higher player counts generally, once you get up to 10-12 people in the same room playing the same game the general vibe becomes increasingly chaotic and it is quite difficult to keep players on topic. Looking at the Ultimate Werewolf instruction manual, it is suggested that the moderator choose a length of time for the first day of of play (perhaps 10 minutes), and if that time is exhausted without the villagers agreeing to lynch someone night immediately falls with no one dying. The warnings of time running out should be enough to get players to make some decisions, and even if the standstill continues and night falls, the game is still progressed by the wolves (quickly!) killing a villager. This day length could easily be extended to every day if necessary, and I think it is an excellent idea.
2. The other big delays with our Werewolf plays last night were due to uncertainty as to which scenarios to use with the number of people playing the game. At one point we had a scenario picked out and explained and then we realized that our player count was wrong and we needed to start over. The rulebook has several suggested scenarios, but very few for our typical group sizes. Before our next game night I'll need to put together several scenarios for each group size through a reasonable number (perhaps 14 or 15). This way we can just count players, pick one of the preselected sets of roles and play.

Though my impressions of Werewolf have been gradually getting more positive over the last few months, and the sessions last night were pretty interesting and enjoyable, the game is certainly not firing on all cylinders yet. The above fixes will hopefully get the game to the point where we can concentrate more on the actual strategy and interactions of the game itself and not be distracted by confusion and chaos. I'm already ready for another go, although I really want to play Ghost Stories, Le Havre, Stone Age, and Battlestar Galactica too! Too many great games, too little time...

Game Night II

Our second formal game night took place yesterday evening. Turnout was lower than the first go round as a number of people had to cancel last minute for various (nefarious?) reasons. The six of us have been crazy about Shadows Over Camelot of late so that was our clear first choice of game. I've been very high on Shadows thus far, but this session struck me as rather flat. This may, of course, been partially due to my lack of effectiveness as traitor, leading to my almost embarrassing defeat.

Is Shadows Over Camelot getting too easy?

I'll admit, my enthusiasm for the game has been dampened slightly after last night's session. As the traitor I felt I never had a great opportunity to crash the knights' party--largely because they were completely kicking evil ass the entire time! Not sure if our group is getting better at the game, it is altogether too easy with six players, or if the loyalists simply had an unfortunately (for me!) uninspiring mix of black cards during the game. Of course, it's altogether possible that I do simply suck as the traitor, but even if that wasn't the case I don't think I had a realistic shot of victory.

Quote from the game:

"I don't think there is a traitor. If there is, they really suck!"

Ouch.

Perhaps we need to ratchet up the difficulty by using squire rules (each player needs to win a quest before activating their special power) when we have 6 or 7 players. Or, we may still be communicating too directly and need to restrict strategy talk much more than we have thus far.

A Sliver of Hope?

There was one point late in the game where the siege engine total reached nine, only three away from an evil win. Looking back, this was clearly the best opportunity for me to reveal myself and make a play for the victory. I considered this move at the time but I felt it was a long shot at best as the knights were not being pressed anywhere on the board and had at their disposal almost limitless resources for fighting siege engines. As it turns out this long shot was probably my best chance to turn the tide during the game but I am almost certain it would not have been successful, and at the time it seemed a better strategy to bide my time and hope that a better opportunity would present itself.

Probably revealing myself immediately upon starting the session and placing a siege engine every turn would have focused more pressure on the loyal knights, but that strategy seems much less interesting than keeping hidden waiting to pounce at a moment of weakness. Ah well, perhaps I'll try that next time--it would make for an interesting and vastly different game experience to have that traitor vs. loyalist direct confrontation over the course of an entire play.

Anyway, our tendency to make Shadows into a three hour game meant that it was our only play of the night, so some smaller strategy games will have to wait until next time.

Gaming in May

May was a bit of a down month (as was April, at least compared to the first quarter of 2010) as far as my gaming was concerned. The month featured a couple of big gatherings for party games, one at my brother-in-law's place in Vermont, and the other here at the Todd Residence. The former consisted of a big game of Time's Up won by the Mrs. and Emily, a couple of games of Ca$h'N Gun$ (the Mrs. and Mike the two winners), and a three player session of Ghost Stories in which Tom, Emily, and I emerged victorious (despite playing on Nightmare difficulty) The latter game night featured a nine player game of Pit (which I didn't realize until mid-game is actually only an eight-player game), and another session of Time's Up, this time with three teams of three. I liked the 3x3 configuration for this one, and amazingly enough the game ended in a three way tie at 40 points each!

The Mrs. and I had another couple over with their son to play games. After one big game of Dixit, the grown-ups attempted a play of Ghost Stories, but we had to cut it short due to lateness of hour.

The Mrs. and I played a couple of games while we were visiting my Mom's and we couldn't manage to recruit my sometimes lame gaming family to play anything. One was Ghost Stories on Nightmare which we lost in epic fashion, and my latest expansion for Carcassonne (Abbey & Mayor...thanks darling!), which the Mrs. won by a landslide.

I did manage to keep up a weekly online game throughout the month, so that is a big positive. At various times myself, Tom, Ben, Trevor, and Toph all participated. Most frequent game played in May was Puerto Rico, which I'm really loving despite really not being very good at it at all, followed by Pandemic. Everyone seems to be enjoying both games and I look forward to delving further into those two and adding to the variety as we continue our weekly meetup.

My final bit of gaming in May is my return to Magic: the Gathering. I played a fair amount about a year ago when Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn were the newest sets, and I built a couple of decks. Now I have the full Zendikar block to play with and there seems to be some pretty fun stuff in there.

I haven't had much of an opportunity to play yet, mostly I've been tossing around ideas and trying to come up with a fun standard deck to play, and I've been trying to sell off the more valuable of my standard legal cards before they rotate out and lose value. Really one of the tricks to maintaining the value of one's collection in Magic is to try to sell or trade cards while they still hold strong value, and acquire others that are either older and are poised to better maintain price, or are brand new and will be tournament legal for another year or two. I have certainly sold some cards I would rather keep this time around, but I can always reacquire them a year down the road once they're a lot cheaper.

Besides building a new deck for standard tournament play I've been working on two EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) decks. This is a format that I love (from very limited play, of course, but I love the idea!), and it tends to be a very inexpensive format to play. Because of this I'm able to maximize the play value of my limited card pool and can convert a few expensive cards into a decent stack of EDH staples.

Looking forward to June, I intend to play a bunch of magic, continue my weekly online board game night, and get to playing a whole lot more strategy board games! Also, perhaps I'll write a little more often in this ol' blog. My fan is demanding higher output, so I'll try to write just a little bit more than I have these last couple of months...

Chaos in the Old World

Finally brought Chaos in the Old World to the table Saturday night. Dave, Monica, the Mrs. and I worked through the rules and made it through a couple of rounds before we called it a night. Armed with a better understanding of the rules, we met up again the next night, minus Monica, and played through a full game.

Dave & the Mrs. seemed to think poorly of the amount of luck in the game (because of die rolls as well as card draws), but I feel that the vast quantity of decisions in Chaos in the Old World more than makes up for this. One of the major benefits a board game gains by having luck elements is a need for players to adjust strategy as conditions change unexpectedly. This is certainly a quality I enjoy in games, and after one play I think there is an appropriate amount of luck present. (Though, of course, this opinion is subject to change, and certain other players in the room may strongly disagree!)

There is a lot going on here: players can win either by advancing their own personal victory dials to a certain level, or by achieving a certain threshold on the common victory point track. VPs themselves can be gained both through having a strong military presence in a region (by dominating the area), or by corrupting a region with one's rather weak cultist figures (eventually ruining a region and gaining large numbers of VPs). In Chaos, players must balance their personal victory goals with paying close attention to the other players' goals as to block them from advancing too quickly.

As in El Grande (another area control game), there does seem to be a disadvantage in building a strong early presence in the game, as the other players are very motivated to take down the leader. I felt in this first play I established myself a little too early as the leader and paid for that fact throughout the mid-game. Dave, through some good late-game die rolls and maximizing his victory dial bonuses, ended up the winner, but if one roll during the last turn would have landed differently the game would have gone an additional round and anyone could have been victorious.

I eagerly await our next play of Chaos in the Old World, as it is a deep and intriguing game, both very thematic and seemingly well balanced.

A Pair of Favorites

We had Zachary over last night for games. Ghost stories was first up and we took a crack at Nightmare level, the first to involve multiple incarnations of Wu-Feng rather than just one. We took out the first of four, but after that nasty black ghosts and a tough one two punch of Wu-Feng incarnations brought the game out of hand. I was impressed by the new style of play however, and look forward to our next go round.

The Mrs. retired upstairs to study and Zachary and I pulled out Dominion for a quick game. We used the base set with random kingdom cards. I tried a chapel strategy and was able to pick up a couple of gold early, but Zachary managed to stay right in step and when I had the opportunity to end the game with my fifth province purchase I had the feeling he would still be the victor because of having more estates, gardens, and duchies. I delayed game's end to try to get a step up, but he was able to keep pace and take the last province to boot for the victory. I think perhaps key to ditching estates early with chapel is to have some extra buys in the mid to late game to replace those lost vps with a few extra victory cards.

I'm looking forward to playing Chaos in the Old World this weekend for the first time, and have been reading and taking notes on Through the Ages as well, though I wasn't able to get it to the table yesterday as I'd hoped.

Back in the Saddle

After a full ten days absent from board games, I played a quick round of Pandemic on BrettSpielWelt last night with Tom. We played on maximum difficulty (Legendary), he was the Medic and I the Generalist. Medic was strong as usual, helping with board control, but the Generalist still feels weak, especially in a two player game. We were desperately in need of a role that would allow us to find cures more easily such as Researcher or Scientist, as the player cards were falling in about the least efficient manner possible.

We finally did find a lone cure four epidemics into the game, but were far far from winning when the inevitable disaster struck.

I'm exited to get in a game of Ghost Stories with Zachary and the Mrs. tonight, and if I can learn the game, perhaps Through the Ages this afternoon.

Gaming in Vermont

The family and I spent a largely sick extended weekend in VT, but did get a few games in anyway.

Ca$h'n Gun$

We weren't sure how Ca$h'n Gun$ would go over with my Quaker aunt and uncle, but decided to try it out. Game one featured five players and no super powers, as most of the participants were new to the game. Shockingly, I pulled out the victory! (My first at the game, I believe!) My brother Ben joined us for game two, bringing us up to a full compliment of six, and we added the super powers.

The most notable moment in the game was, I believe, round five, when there were about 15 bills on the table due to one impossible split-up, and one grenade detonation. Tara and I were the two that survived to collect that huge pot (although Ned could have used his super power to get a share as well if not for his misunderstanding of the timing of the power), and thus we had targets on our heads the remainder of the game. Everyone still felt I was probably the leader after round eight, but Darlene tied my final score and won since she had no shame markers to my three...

We also played Ca$h'n Gun$ with Tom & Emily, and despite only being a four player game it was still quite fun. We taught the game using two sample rounds with random bullet cards to introduce the basics, then read all the super powers out loud and jumped into the full game.

I like the two sample round teaching technique followed by the addition of super powers. There has been some confusion about the difference between phases and rounds and about when exactly super powers are to be used--I'll have to spend a little more time detailing those situations in the future.

Ghost Stories

After our play of Ca$h'n Gun$ the four of us jumped into a game of normal difficulty Ghost Stories. Emily was the only new player, so for the most part we taught as we progressed through the game. We kept up with the ghosts fairly well early, but as we neared Wu-Feng we were really overwhelmed by ghosts, having a completely full board for several turns before he arrived. We were able to free up a couple of spots, and the incarnation that appeared was Creeping Horror (4 green resistance, steals a die when he comes into play).

Emily happened to have two green tao tokens so she moved in front of him intending to set up another monk to take him down. She might as well take a shot herself, however, since she was right there, but she needed to roll greens on both remaining dice to pull off the victory. It was the perfect roll--two greens, high fives all around, and the win! I like the idea of moving up to Hell difficulty, but I don't know that we're quite ready for it--we do seem to be winning a high percentage of games at Normal, but the finishes always seem tight.

Time's Up: Title Recall

Later in the day we changed venues and added a couple of players: Mike and Sue. Time's Up was the game and though she and I did lose a match as a team the last time we played, the Mrs. is still the best single player at the game that I know. Thus it should come as no surprise that she and Sue took this one home, though Tom & Emily started to gain some ground in the later rounds. Ca$h'n Gun$ may be just as fun as this one at times, but nothing beats the Time's Up experience. Having to switch gears and be more creative as the rounds go by in the game really make for a rich experience, and one that I like to get to during any party game get together.

Session Report: My Week in Games

I must admit that it's pretty amazing that I need to consolidate a week's worth of session reports in one post because I'm simply playing so many games!

Games played this week:

• Dominion (6 plays) I played Dominion with all sorts of people this week. I played one teaching game with Abby, two simultaneous games teaching several new players, a pair of 2-player games with Dave, and yet another simultaneous session in which we broke out a few of the Intrigue cards. I'm loving this game, but still feel as if my handle on strategy is fairly weak. I won two of the five games I played other than the one with Abby. The two games at one table system seems to work fairly well, though it has yet to play out quite how I expected. As players get more games under their belts and play proceeds more quickly, I envision games ending, players shuffling between the two groups, and then card sets switched out as desired. In this way players will get so see a variety of different cards and play against a number of different opponents over the course of an evening.
  
• Wits & Wagers (2 plays) This one is fun and quick, and I'm glad I've been able to work in a couple plays of the game. I'm reminded, however, that it is very light.
  
• Pandemic (2 plays) I recorded one play with Abby (our second game overall), and though she gets all the basic mechanics, much of the strategy is still over her head--perhaps not the best choice with her yet. Also, the Mrs. and I taught the game to a couple during their second night over for games. They enjoyed it for the most part but will probably get a better grasp on more advanced strategy in subsequent plays.
  
• Race for the Galaxy (2 plays) Still loving this one despite Dave beating me in all three of the games I've played with him so far. Maybe I'm just not good at this one! So many hard decisions here to be made every turn--both in which cards to play and which to spend, and then which actions to select each round. I feel as if I have a much firmer grasp on the former, and not so much on the latter.
  
• Time's Up: Title Recall (1 play) Best party game ever! Can't get enough of this one, it's the centerpiece of every party game evening we host. We have never, to my knowledge, played two games of this back to back, however, perhaps because it's a little longer than the other party games we own.
  
• Cluzzle (1 play) I enjoyed my play of this on Friday. I respect the idea, the creativity, and the game system here, though I am pretty horrible at the game. I finished in last place. Again. Others I've played it with also seem a little lukewarm here despite doing significantly better in the final standings. Cluzzle still needs a few more plays before I can really decide what I think.
  
• Ca$h'n Gun$ (1 play) Really enjoying this one since we added the super powers, although I'm not entirely sure that someone's super power has ever actually tipped the game in their favor yet in our plays. I'll have to pay attention to that the next time we bring it to the table. I need to run the undercover cop variant soon, but feel as if we should try the super powers a few more times first.
  
• Say Anything (1 play) This one was fun as always--lots of laughter paired with creative answers. Say Anything is an excellent social game, especially with 6-8 players.
  
• Ghost Stories (1 play) Our one play of this one was late in the evening, with many distractions and a little too much booze so it dragged a little. Ghost Stories really requires you to be almost fully lucid to make the most of it. We've played the last couple games on Normal difficulty (two on a scale of four, four being hardest), and that seems fairly appropriate. The next level, Hell, seems like it is going to be a decent hike in difficulty and we're not quite there yet, methinks!
  
• Cheese Snatching (1 play) The cute and quick little push your luck kids game is still a favorite of mine (and the kiddos too!), and we played it yesterday before bedtime. Lincoln took this one 16 points to Abby's 14 and my 12. Apparently this is another one that I'm just not cut out for!
  

Well that's the last seven days in games. The coming week will probably be a little lighter game-wise since we'll be visiting family in Vermont and there will probably be fewer people looking to play games. I may aim for a gathering to get some party games to the table, however, with the family.

Recent Gaming

Two weeks ago was Vegas Week when the Mrs. left me to my own devices. (My devices, in this case, were board games apparently!) Last week was mostly concerned with catching up on life and relaxing a bit, and thus almost completely devoid of games. This week threw us once again into a whirlwind of game nights--in some ways perhaps too many, but I refuse to complain about playing too many board games! What follows is a quick rundown of my last six days of board game mayhem:

• I taught Abby Pandemic on Sunday. She was the dispatcher and I the scientist. Unfortunately the player cards didn't really fall our way and two consecutive epidemics spelled our doom.
• Monday brought David (back from Italy), and Stacey over for a play of Agricola. Nobody really seemed to have their heads in the game and it was a little slow going at first. I made a couple poor decisions early that made it difficult to compete later on. David finished in first place this time with the Mrs. two points behind.
• On Tuesday the Mrs. had evening commitments so I taught Abby and Lincoln Wasabi, a game that Abby had been asking to play pretty much since I bought it last year! My opinion on this one has been steadily on the rise, which may or may not be related to some recent victories... The trick here is to adopt the style of play that best suits the depth of the game. Wasabi must be played at a brisk pace--if the game bogs down with too much analyzing, the fun really drains out of the game.
• Wednesday brought Stacey, Monica, Wannie, Theo, and Ana. Though I had originally envisioned a strategy game night, this one ended up with too many players, putting us into the realm of party games. Theo had been requesting Cluzzle the last couple times she'd been over so we opened that box for the first time, with Sarah and Wannie becoming a team to cut the group down to the required six players. The game was fun, but both my sculpting and question asking/sculpture guessing left much to be desired and I finished in dead last. Cluzzle awaits further plays before I'll pass judgment.
• Thursday has been Zachary night of late and this week was no exception. He, the Mrs. and I played our first game of Ghost Stories in a few weeks, bumping the difficulty up from initiation to normal due to a couple of victories in our last games. This one didn't play out very well with the ghosts pushing us pretty hard most of the game. We did make it to Wu Feng's appearance, but only had one 'hail mary' shot at his defeat before succumbing to certain doom... The Mrs. retired for the evening and Zachary pondered which of my many games he'd like to learn this evening. Dominion was the final choice, and seemingly a wise one, since we had a lot of fun. We played the base game with the 'first game' recommended kingdom cards. Zachary caught on very quickly and ended only three points behind my lead at game's end. I definitely need to get this one to the table more often, as it is a quick play but still with lots of strategy and variation.
• Last night brought Chris 'Bucky,' Jessica 'Joy Luck Club,' Stacey, and Ivan 'Mr. Shuffles.' We played our first game of Ca$h'N Gun$ with the super powers and had an absolute blast! I'd been a little lukewarm on the game up to this point, enjoying it enough in principle, but never really loving it. I loved this play! Super powers lend much interest and strategy to the game, but somehow the result was the same--Jessica was our winner. We followed with an amazing game of Time's Up: Title Recall (of course, almost every game of this one is a winner). The Mrs. and I were on the same Time's Up team for the first time, and ended up winning, though all three teams were excellent. Sometimes I feel this game works better with 8 or 10, but this session with six will be hard to beat.

This has really been a fabulous week for board games, and has me looking forward to the next one!

When the Mrs. Goes Away: RftG, Party Games, BSW

Race for the Galaxy (Thursday)

I taught David the game on Thursday, and it occurred to me that I'm really not very good at game explanation! I felt like I chose a very poor route to describing the game and realize now that I need to start coming up with a game plan before teaching any game. Luckily, David knows his board games and was able to stumble through the weak explanation and manage to learn the game well enough to beat me despite this being perhaps my 7th or 8th play to his 1st...

This experience also makes me wonder if I may let my guard down when teaching games. David also beat me in our first game of Agricola, though I suppose that was his second game overall, just his first in a year or two.

Race for the Galaxy is a space themed card game that uses similar mechanics to the legendary Puerto Rico board game--namely, that each player chooses a particular role at the start of the turn to determine which actual game phases occur that turn. For instance, if no one chooses the 'Settle' card, then the Settle phase doesn't happen this turn, and no one will have the chance to settle a new world.

Race involves lots of strategy, but is fairly quick playing. The cards are marked with a system of icons that take a little time getting used to, and the game explanation is a bit lengthy, but thus far I've been very impressed with the game and would love to start playing it more often.

Party Games (Friday)

We had a five person group over for more light-hearted games on Friday night. The glaring omission here would be Time's Up, which we still haven't managed to get to the table in 2010, though we love it so! The fact we had an odd number of players dissuaded us here, though there is a five player variant in the rules that we will have to try sometime.

• Ca$h'N Gun$ People do seem to enjoy this one, though we have still only played with the basic rules which really do not interest me very much. Certainly next time we play we'll have to move up to one of the more advanced variants, either the one with the specialized player powers or the 'one of us is a cop' version.
• Dixit I have enjoyed this game every time I've played it, but I'm still not fully sold. Dixit is creative, which I like, but it seems a little too subdued to be considered a party game. Not sure what niche it will ultimately fill, but I hope it does find a place because there is some potential here. Currently, however, I would reach for Time's Up, Say Anything, or Wits & Wagers before Dixit.
• Dancing Eggs The kids' game that works better for grown ups made an appearance at the end of the night because it is just so simple to explain and quick to play. I even won this one because Sarah wasn't present and she always wins! The game is fun enough that I won't turn it down when people want to play it, but I certainly wouldn't suggest it myself...

Carcassonne (on BrettSpielWelt, Tuesday)

I've been playing a lot of Carcassonne lately, both in person with Abby and online with the likes of Ben, Trevor, and Tom. This session was with Ben and we played two games, each of us winning one of them. I really like the idea of playing this one online, but unfortunately it is hampered by the inability of players to look at their next tile during the downtime when other players are taking their turns. In face to face Carc this really helps the game move along at a brisk pace since you can plan most of your strategy between turns.

Pandemic (on BrettSpielWelt, Wednesday)

We've hit a bit of a rough patch with Pandemic as of late, probably because we haven't been playing it much recently. This time we played on Legendary difficulty (7 epidemics), players were Tom (Dispatcher), Trevor (Containment Specialist), and myself (Researcher). We were doing a pretty good job at keeping the diseases down, I dished cards to others to get the cures and we were able to construct several research stations. In the end we were two turns from victory when back to back epidemics hit and the second one landed in a city with a cube already in it next to a 3-cube city. Red ended with -15 cubes and we had probably 15 outbreaks as well...

Well, that just about does it for my week of gaming: 7 straight days of board games that helped me pass the time until my love returned from Las Vegas. Not mentioned were a number of games I played with the kids including Yahtzee, Heroscape, and Carcassonne: the Castle, all of which we enjoyed immensely. Here's to many more games in 2010!

When the Mrs. Goes Away: Agricola

Agricola (Sunday, Monday, Saturday)

Agricola is a farming simulation game in which players take on the role of a fifteenth century farming couple. Your goal is to build and develop your farm to be the most advanced and well balanced one amongst those playing. Okay, so how do you accomplish this?

Agricola belongs to a category of titles called 'worker placement' games, which means, in Agricola's case, that each player takes turns using one of their family members (the workers) to claim one of many action spaces on a game board. When chosen, each of these spaces gives that player an opportunity to better his farm in some way. For instance, particular spaces might allow you to:

• receive a load of wood (which can allow you to later build fences or an addition to your house)
• renovate your home from a wooden shack to a much more prestigious clay hut!
• add cattle to your farm (though you best have a fenced-in pasture to contain them, or at very least a cooking hearth to make use of them before they run away!)
• plow a field, or sow some wheat seeds into an already plowed field
• have a baby!
  

Each player begins a gaming session with exactly two family members--the farmer and their spouse. As the game progresses opportunities to grow your family will arise, allowing each couple to have up to three children who will naturally be expected to help out on the farm, and thus increase the number of family members available to choose additional actions on the game board. Hey, farming life is difficult--once little Tommy can walk, gosh darn it, he should be able to plow the fields and mend the fences!

Though Agricola is very much a thinking game with some very deep strategy, it succeeds over other games that may be so described in a number of ways:

• The complexity of the game can be varied to a great extent. Some of the great variation and replayability of Agricola lies in the decks of cards that allow players to build 'minor improvements' and take on beneficial 'occupations' over the course of the game. These cards can either be omitted to simplify the game (useful especially when teaching the rules to new players), or upgraded to more complicated and interactive cards when players are ready to up the ante.
• A player's progress isn't recorded in terms of generic 'victory points' (as in Caylus or El Grande) but rather in tangible farm improvements. It is especially helpful and rewarding for new players to see their progress advance by having a couple of fenced pastures, a plowed field, some sheep, or a new addition to their house, rather than 'oh joy, I now have 27 victory points!'
• Agricola has a very strong theme that keeps players interested in the game. All the mechanics seem to fit the theme very nicely so it really feels like you are developing your farm:

1. One grain sown into a plowed field nets you three grain over the course of several rounds.
   
2. Owning a pair of any given animal results in a baby animal of that type at the end of each round.
3. Adding a room onto your wooden house costs you five wood resources (for the walls) and one reed (for the roof).
4. For you to increase the size of your family you first need to expand the size of your home.
   
5. To hold more than one animal on your farm (one can stay in your house as a pet!) you need to build a stable or fence in pastures.
   

As I mention above, however, to succeed at Agricola you need to master a great deal of strategy. Those who have more experience at the game will generally have a great advantage over new players. The three games I played last week were all won by those who had played the game previously, and always by large margins. I had probably half a dozen games under my belt beforehand, and won two of the three contests. David, the only other board game enthusiast amongst the players, and the only other to have played Agricola previously, won the remaining game. Though the game has been a lot of fun to play thus far (and not just because I've been winning!), I would imagine Agricola will be even more rewarding once some other players get a few more plays in and really start to even the playing field.

Games in 2010

Thus far in 2010 I've had several opportunities to get board games to the table. I tried Pink Godzilla for the first time with Trevor, Ghost Stories online with Tom and in person with Sarah and Zach, and a bunch of party games with a group of eight.

Pink Godzilla

Trevor and I were able to meet up in Worcester, MA while I was attending a brief culinary conference at the College of the Holy Cross. He brought Carcassonne and Pink Godzilla, though we only had time for a play of the latter. The game pits players against one another as rival video game designers attempting to program the best and most elaborate titles. Although fairly light and quite random, there are a few interesting mechanics in Pink Godzilla, and enough strategy that I would gladly give it at least a few more plays. The powerful cards can certainly come up at times that makes it much easier for one player to gain the advantage, but there are tough decisions to be made as to which cards a player keeps in his hand and which he gives his opponent the opportunity to steal. An auction mechanic for the commonly available cards on the table also plays a part in reigning in the random aspects of the game.

Ghost Stories

I am up to perhaps 5 or 6 plays of this excellent cooperative title, yet have only been victorious once--last night with the Mrs. and Zachary. Though we seemed to be overwhelmed by ghosts fairly early in the game, we were somehow able to hold them off just long enough to get a chance to face Wu Feng, who happened to be the best possible incarnation for our situation at the time of his arrival. Zachary died just before the incarnation was drawn, but the Mrs. and I were both in ideal positions with the right mix of Tao tokens to secure victory. Tom and I have played several 2-player games of Ghost Stories but victory has thus far eluded us. I recently read that the 2-player game is the most difficult to win, so perhaps that is not that surprising. I feel that I've mastered most of the rules at this point, although there are still a couple of gray areas. Ghost Stories still feels like a very similar game to Pandemic, although very differently themed.

Party Games

The Mrs. and I hosted six guests last weekend for games. We played Bananagrams (the Mrs. and I for the first time), Pit, Time's Up: Title Recall, and Say Anything. I would say Zachary and Chris were the two best at Bananagrams (with Rosa close behind), and I was perhaps the worst, only really being in close competition for one of our 8-10 plays. Pit was frantic and fun, though very light on the strategy. We found that since the bear and the bull tend to pull scores down each round, that it actually takes quite a while for anyone to build up enough points to secure the victory. The rules suggested playing to 500 points, but since we were eager to play other games we cut that down to 150, which is a good thing since even that score took quite a while to achieve. Next was Time's Up which has become our favorite party game, although the Mrs. has proven to be much better at it than I, a fact further proven by her and Zachary mopping the floor with the rest of us at the game (although Zach himself is a theater professor, so he perhaps has a natural inclination to be good at charade style activities!) Say Anything rounded out our night and wasn't begun until past 11:30 pm, so people must have been having a good time to be up for yet another game that would take us into the new day to complete. As usual, the game did not disappoint. It is essentially Apples to Apples but with slightly deeper scoring and much more creativity.

Here's hoping for much more frequent boardgaming in 2010!

Standard Magic in Canton

So yesterday at 2:30 I was informed that the draft tournament scheduled for last night had been switched to Standard format. Blasted! I, of course, have no Standard Magic deck. Since my beating by Hans the other night, I had primarily given up on my Jund Devour deck, and had begun designing a Bant Exalted deck to take its place. Luckily, I still had all the cards for the Jund deck on hand, as well as a bunch of cards I bought along with the original 60 as an alternate build strategy. So last night I got to work redesigning the deck to give it a little more resiliency.

The basic goal in the redesign was to take some of the emphasis of the deck away from the devour mechanic. I wanted devour to play a role in the strategy, but as I found against Hans too much reliance on it leaves me very susceptible to spot removal. During my testing with Hans either bad draws on my part or too much good removal on his part early in the game led to a mid game with me holding big devour creatures in hand and nothing on the board to eat. So my new emphasis was to develop a strong board position and use devour more of a role player and/or a finisher. Another part of my redesign was to come to terms with the fact that this is a very slow aggro deck and stop worrying about having early threats, which only distracted from the deck's overall effectiveness. Thus, more CIPT lands could be added, and some early weaker spells & creatures could be cut in favor of more mid-range strong cards.

Here was my final list for the original deck, since I don't think I ever posted the final product:

4 Safehold Elite
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Sprouting Thrinax
4 Nantuko Husk
3 Caldera Hellion
2 Mycoloth
1 Predator Dragon

2 Dragon Fodder
2 Bitterblossom
2 Goblin Assault
2 Torrent of Souls
2 Terminate

4 Sarkhan Vol

4 Savage Lands
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Sulfurous Springs
1 Karplusan Forest
1 Llanowar Wastes
5 Mountain
4 Forest
3 Swamp


Out:
-4 Safehold Elite [Only good with devour, not on it's own. Only other benefit is it's 2 cc, which isn't a big deal because I don't need the early threat.]
-2 Nantuko Husk [Relies on a bunch of other creatures &/or Sarkhan Vol to be in play. I want to stick to creatures that have good synergies with the deck but are also great alone. 2 stay in.]
-2 Sarkhan Vol [A good card, but really unfortunate to have two in starting hand. Not sure what number is best but 4 may be too many.]
-2 Dragon Fodder [Only good because it is quick, so it can go.]
-1 Caldera Hellion [Good as a board sweeper but reliant on having a good creature base when it comes out. 2 is enough.]
-1 Mycoloth [Good, but doesn't give me a 'comes into play' effect, making it even weaker against spot removal than the Hellion. Maybe I should take this one out completely, but for now I'll stick with one.]
-3 Forest [To make room for Treetop Village.]

In:
+4 Murderous Redcap [Great on its own because it persists and because it is spot removal/burn. Even better with Torrent of Souls & Heartmender, and when Nantuko Husk & Heartmender are in play wicked awesome.]
+2 Heartmender [Good alone, amazing in conjunction with the Redcap and Kitchen Finks.]
+4 Incinerate [Removal/burn is good and this deck needed more. After playing last night I think 2 Incinerate/4 Terminate would have been better.]
+3 Treetop Village [Once I realized that this deck didn't necessarily need to be fast, the fact that these come into play tapped wasn't a big deal. Add more strong creatures to enhance my attack, and immune to direct damage or mass removal played on my opponent's turn when he isn't a creature.]
+1 Bloodbraid Elf [Just because I like it and I had one and it was in Jund colors! Probably wouldn't include it again...a little too aggressive for this deck and the deck isn't optimized to make use of cascade.]
+1 Hurricane [An extra finisher, and flying boardsweeper. My only fliers were Bitterblossom tokens and Predator Dragon, so this could potentially be very useful.]

I should have taken notes, as I don't remember much of individual games, so this will just be a brief summary.

Round One [Jeff, playing UWB with Tidehollow Sculler, Master Transmuter, 1000 Year Elixir]

Game one was an epic 30 minute battle where he had 2 Tidehollow Scullers keeping two cards from my hand, one being the terminate that I would need to kill one of the Scullers! The Master Transmuter could bounce the Scullers to keep looking at my hand and taking the most dangerous cards. Eventually I was able to get Sarkhan Vol out and get to his big ability: Put 5 4/4 flying dragon tokens into play. That was enough for the win.

Game two was quick. He never got established and I won handily.

1-0-0

Round Two [Jason, playing a zombie build that intends to deck the opponent, Lich Lord of Unx, Mind Funeral, etc.]

Both games a combination of my early spot removal and his slight mana problems kept him from getting enough pieces in play to get his system going. He never once milled a single card from my deck. A little luck, and a good match up for me. I believe I won game two with Sarkhan's third ability once again.

2-0-0

Round Three [Matt, playing WUB Master Transmuter deck with Master of Etherium, Inkwell Leviathan, Sharding Sphinx, 1000 Year Elixir, etc.]

Game one I couldn't disrupt him early enough and he took control of the board.

Game two and three I kept his artifact creatures at bay long enough to build up board control and win. If I recall Murderous Redcap and Torrent of Souls were instrumental in at least one of the wins.

3-0-0

Round Four [Greg, playing mostly white Goat Deck.]

One of the most interesting decks at the tourney the Goat deck made oodles of 0/1 goat tokens, so it was very difficult to push through for a win. I won game one on the strength of (once again) Murderous Redcap, Heartmender, and Torrent of Souls. Game two I had Bitterblossom in play that slowly sapped my life and he held me off until I was within burn range, then he Banefired me to a crisp. No time for game three.

3-0-1

This left me as the #1 seed and in a top four playoff.

Semifinal: Matt again, with the Master Transmuter deck.
Game one his deck went off almost perfectly, Etherium Sculptor turn two, Master Transmuter turn three, Transmuter bounces Sculptor to hand and drops Inkwell Leviathan turn four. I don't draw the terminate I need to fend him off and he wins easily.

Games two and three he has mana issues and I disrupt all his early attempts to take control.

4-0-1

Final: Hans. Yes, the one who obliterated my first incarnation of this deck.

Game one, Knight of the Reliquary, Wooly Thoctar, and Figure of Destiny do me in. I should have called a mulligan on my opening hand but I hate doing that, and I don't know my deck well enough yet to know when I should do it. Also, and early terminate might have swung the game in my favor but it didn't show.

Game two and three he had some mana issues and I didn't. His red & black hate from the sideboard never showed and I won both games. One game I recall was decided by Predator Dragon, then Torrent of Souls for the finish.

5-0-1, and first place! To say the least I'm pretty excited about that result. A bit of luck here and there, and a lot of finicky blue decks that my deck matched up against fairly well were probably the keys to victory. Hans's deck was my toughest match up, and the one that I probably should have lost. I did play well, though, and didn't make that many big mistakes, so I could capitalize one what luck I did have. My sideboard was rather weak because I had just thrown it together, but it sufficed.

I would say the stars of the deck last night were Murderous Redcap and Torrent of Souls. The Redcaps resulted in very strong board control mid-game, especially the two times I had them working with Heartmender. Torrent of Souls probably finished 4-5 games on it's own, just an awesome card for this deck. Sarkhan Vol was very instrumental, as was Kitchen Finks, as always. Hurricane did finish one game for me, but I only drew it twice. I never drew Mycoloth so I don't know if it should stay. I don't know if Goblin Assault is good enough in this deck, I pulled it in a lot of game twos for board sweepers, and as I mentioned already BB Elf doesn't fit. Probably two more terminates and a Banefire would be great here as well.

Anyway, I'm glad I got a chance to mix things up with this deck and give it another try before I just tore it apart. I'm sure this build wouldn't be viable at an extremely competitive event, but it worked great last night and was a blast to play.

Say Anything

Played two games of Say Anything with the Mrs., Lucy, and Stacey last night, and everyone had a good time. Our original intention was to teach Puerto Rico, but ultimately made the call that it was too late and too complicated to be getting into at just that moment. Say Anything was amusing, though as always. One complaint I have with the game, that I may have mentioned before, is that too many of the questions are geared toward serious or straightforward answers. Personally I can't imagine using more than a handful of those types of questions over the course of a game since Say Anything really shines with humorous and inventive answers and not straightforward ones.

Puerto Rico needs to be played soon, but I suppose it can wait.

Alara Reborn Draft

I attended my local Alara Reborn release party yesterday, the format being Shards/Reborn/Reborn draft. My Shards pack revealed the ultra-rare planeswalker Elspeth, Knight Errant, which is an amazing card for limited play, so that became my first pick. Still not being that familiar with the Shards block environment I wasn't really sure where to go next. The next several packs I saw didn't really seem to be offering me much to go with the Elspeth, and several random picks ensued before I settled on the Esper Shard with a number of strong White, Blue, and Black cards.

My final deck had a number of strong artifact creatures, a couple of spells with the new cascade ability, some counterspells, and a couple of the mana producing borderposts introduced with Alara Reborn. My deck's primary weakness was probably the complete lack of creature removal, as the one match I lost was due to a couple of particularly nasty first strikers that I just couldn't kill. Ultimately I finished third out of eight players, and had a great time.

Recent Gaming

As you may have noticed, much of my gaming thought of late has been dominated by Magic: the Gathering. Partially this is due to there being an active Magic group here in Canton, whereas it is somewhat difficult to find board game opponents.

The Mrs. and I have been playing lots of Magic, and she designed a mono Black deck. My two decks in operating condition are my partially constructed Jund Devour deck and my White Blue Black Elder Dragon Highlander deck, neither of which is very good, but are still entertaining to play against each other. Once I receive the final half of the Devour deck it should be pretty good, but we'll have to wait and see about that I suppose.

We played a game of Pandemic online last night with Tom on the normal difficulty setting and won fairly easily.

Gaming With Lucy

The Mrs. and I had Lucy over last night for board games, playing Settlers of Catan once and For Sale twice.

This was only Lucy's second game of Settlers, and although she caught on fairly quickly, neither of us put up much of a challenge to the Mrs., who won handily. This was one of those times where one player capitalizes on a few good moves and a few fortunate rolls to really build a dominant mid-game position. Truly she had this one in the bag very early.

Lucy won both games of For Sale, which makes her 3-0 at the game. She may have benefited from the Mrs.' attempts to defeat me, since the game seems to transmit strong effects from one player to the person on their left. So if I had to settle for a bad card, Lucy was probably getting a good one. Then again, perhaps Lucy is just a wiz at For Sale. Maybe in the future we will play around with changing seating order between games of For Sale and see what effect that may have on game play and results.

All in all we had a short but fun gaming evening.

Shards of Alara/Conflux Draft

So I finally attended my first ever Magic: the Gathering booster draft last night. I had a lot of factors working against me especially

• I was unfamiliar with both of the sets we were using, so each time cards were passed to me I had to read through each one and try to make sense of how some of them might work together, and
• I had never played in a draft style tournament before, so although I knew the idea of what I was supposed to accomplish, putting that into practice is entirely more complicated.

Although drafting was a little slow going, I did my best to balance understanding the cards and making a good pick with keeping things moving along as to not disturb the flow of the tournament. I ultimately went with a three color deck consisting of red, black, and green. Really I had the core of an excellent red deck, but green and black acted more as fillers, not bringing a whole lot to the table. I'd like to think given another shot at a Shards/Conflux draft I'd do significantly better, but since all the cards were brand new to me I couldn't specify which cards I may have passed up that I should have picked to take my deck to the next level.

The Cards

Some of the cards I drafted:

• Predator Dragon (3RRR, 4/4, flying, haste, devour 2) This is one of those cards that no matter how unfamiliar you are with drafting strategy or with the sets involved, it's impossible not to recognize its significance. This one is a game breaker for sure. That being said over three rounds and nine games it only hit the table twice, once it was killed immediately because I didn't have any creatures out for it to devour, the second it devoured three creatures to become 10/10, flying, haste and ended the game. As far as big red creatures go, this one may be even cooler than the Shivan Dragon, an old favorite of mine.
• Hell's Thunder (1RR, 4/4, flying, haste, at end of turn sacrifice Hell's Thunder, unearth 4R) A cheap, very powerful creature. Doesn't have nearly the game breaking quality of the Predator Dragon, but for a much lower casting cost, and still nearly as difficult for an opponent to deal with. Also, it can lay in wait in your graveyard for an opportune moment to be unearthed and spring back to life, hopefully ending the game.
• Resounding Thunder (2R, instant, Resounding Thunder deals 3 damage to target creature or player, cycling 5BRG, when you cycle Resounding Thunder, it deals 6 damage to target creature or player) A good direct damage spell that I could have envisioned being cycled instead of cast late in a game, but it never worked out that way.
• Volcanic Fallout (1RR, Volcanic Fallout can't be countered, Volcanic Fallout deals 2 damage to each creature and each player) This has the potential to be a great card in a limited environment, mainly for the mass damage aspect of the card. That being said I never once used this one effectively.
• Blood Cultist (1BR, 1/1, T:Blood Cultist deals 1 damage to target creature, whenever a creature dealt damage by Blood Cultist this turn is put into a graveyard, put a +1/+1 counter on Blood Cultist) This seems to be a good card that I used effectively once or twice. However, there were several occasions where I didn't have the chance to bring her out since my opponent already had a creature with a similar ping ability controlling the board.
• Ignite Disorder (1R, instant, Ignite Disorder deals 3 damage divided as you choose among any number of target white and/or blue creatures) This seemed like it may be better suited to sideboard play, but since my deck was a bit light on removal I mainboarded it. The cost and effect are both excellent, playing it simply runs the risk of the card being useless if your opponent isn't playing those colors.
  
• Sprouting Thrinax (BRG, 3/3, when Sprouting Thrinax is put into a graveyard from play, put three 1/1 green Saproling creature tokens into play) Immediately recognizable as great fodder for creatures with the devour ability, this also has a decent power/toughness for the cost, so long as you are playing those three colors, which I was.

Outcomes

So, how did I do? Not great. I lost my first two matches 1-2, then won my final 2-1. There were eight players in the draft, so the top four played single elimination from that point out, but I wasn't in the top four so I went home to hang out with the Mrs. for a while.

Though I didn't place well, I did have a lot of fun. This experience confirmed to me that drafting is an excellent style of play, and I'm certainly ready to try it again. I got a taste of both Shards of Alara and Conflux, and both seem like very interesting sets. Most importantly I met some new people in the area that are into gaming, so perhaps I'll ultimately be able to find some board game opponents as well.

(Image courtesy of TCGplayer.com)

A Couple Games

Last night I played one game each of Pandemic and Dominion on BrettSpielWelt.

The Mrs., Tom, and I played Pandemic on the heroic difficulty setting, and through finding two cures and eradicating Blumonia the game seemed to be well in hand. All of a sudden a nasty chain reaction was started that took us from two outbreaks to eight and ended the game. Black Plague was in an advanced state, with several cities infected with two disease cubes each. However, we were not making it our top priority since there were also two cities on the board with three cubes, albeit in slightly less dangerous areas. When an epidemic was drawn and Cairo picked as the new city to receive the Black Plague, Cairo came up as the first city on the newly shuffled infection deck, and Black exploded into a six outbreak disaster area.

Here's the question: the turn before we had flown to Santiago to remove a three cube Yellow Fever threat. Was that the right move, or should we have been lessening Black's influence even though there were no three cube cities there? Does one generally dangerous area warrant more attention that an isolated three cube city? Or perhaps Cairo being drawn in that situation was simple terrible luck and we made the right decision. I'm still not sure.

Tom and I played Dominion next and I tried an aggressive Chapel strategy, buying it my first turn and proceeding to weed out all of my estates and coppers. I then proceeded to buy silver, gold, a Market, and a Laboratory or two. The first several times I had the opportunity to buy a province I declined, choosing gold on each occasion instead. The Mrs. laughed at this decision, saying it was foolish and that I should be getting those provinces. Its' possible I waited a little to long to start buying VP cards, but I'm not sure. I did end up winning 29-24, but perhaps I could have won by a greater margin. There is a real sense of power in trashing all those seemingly good cards to make a very condensed and powerful deck. I'll have to try this one again and see if moving to province purchase a bit earlier works out better.

A Little Dominion

I haven't played nearly enough board games as of late. Two days ago I played a game of Dominion with the Mrs. and a day or two before that played a couple of online Dominion games with the Mrs. and Tom.

The first online game was just Tom and I, and I won fairly easily, although this was only his third game of Dominion ever, so that would probably be expected. If I recall, he bought a couple of early VP cards that started to slow his deck down a little too much, where I waited until I hit that eight treasure mark and could start buying provinces. The Mrs. joined us for the second game and despite being hit early and often by the Witch, managed to pull out the win after heavy use of the Chapel to weed out many of her curse cards.

(Curses! A very unfortunate hand of cards. Image courtesy of Abstractite at BGG.)

Our live two player game was perhaps the best game I've played of Dominion thus far. Often I get bogged down by not having a very clear strategy and buying too many action cards that don't necessarily work all that well together. This time I bought more silver (and gold when I could!) and concentrated on Mine to upgrade my treasure and Laboratory to pull more gold and silver into my hand.

We included both new promo kingdom cards in our game, each of us buying an Envoy card and the Mrs. trying the Black Market. Envoy looks powerful at first glance (reveal the top five cards of your deck, your opponent chooses one for you to discard, you draw the rest), but unless you have an extra action from a Village or the like, any action cards drawn with Envoy are useless. So if the five cards are VP, VP, gold, action, action, the gold can be discarded to effectively neutralize the entire draw. The Black Market's utility hinges on what the other nine kingdom cards are in the game. One key added card could be huge, for instance being able to buy the only available Witch early in a game could be a game changing opportunity.

I've come to realize that I am so far from having a firm grasp on strategy in the Dominion base set that I really should be in no rush to buy the new expansion when it comes out! So perhaps I'll buy it right away and let it look pretty on the shelf for a few months as I give the the 27 kingdom cards I already own more of a workout.