The original intention was to head to John's to continue his 4E Dungeons and Dragons campaign (thus moving down on the Geek Hierarchy), but due to 2 last minute cancellations we changed plans and played some boardgames instead. John made us burgers and Carissa baked us a cake (for my birthday on the first)! Thanks John and Carissa!
Cosmic Encounter has recently undergone its 4th instantiation. This time it has been given a very attractive and enjoyable makeover by the bits whores at Fantasy Flight. It was about time someone washed the bad taste of the Avalon Hill version out of our collective mouths, and Fantasy Flight did just that, keeping the one nice thing about that version (the better production values) but adding back in a whole truckload of the alien powers from the Eon and Mayfair editions, plus some new ones of their own. They also did a pretty credible job of minimizing rules vagaries and contradictions, which is hard to do in a game whose basic premise is: "here are the rules, ok now everyone has a power and a bunch of cards that break those rules".
We played with 4. I definitely had the alien power with the best name: The Masochist ("You have the power to hurt yourself"). The effect of my power was to win the game if I managed to lose all of my ships. I misplayed it a bit - what I should have done was try to win normally and used the power if I happened to get into a situation where I might be able to lose my last few ships. Instead I set right out attempting to lose as many ships as I could, which led to me sabotaging a battle I was allied in, which led to no one asking me to ally anymore.
Despite all that, Grey and I had a chance for a shared victory, but I passed on it, only to have Ian and John grab a dishonorable shared victory a couple of turns later.
Scores:
Ian (Human) - 5
John (Fodder) - 5
Grey (Will) - 4
Chris (Masochist) - 3
Game Time: 60 minutes
One of my favorite less ballyhooed games, Witch's Brew is a card game in which players collect ingredients to brew potions that are worth points at the end of the game. The game is played in a series of "sets", and in each set, players choose 5 actions out of a total of 12. It is important to try to be aware of what actions other players might play and plan your actions accordingly, and this leads to some enjoyable Princess Bride battle of wits situations ("He must have picked this action. But of course he would have known that I would think that, so perhaps he did not choose that action. etc. etc.").
We played 2 games of this (it is quite short), and realized that we probably should have swapped around the seating order between games, as seating order is critically important in this game. Next time gadget. Next time.
Scores (Game 1):
John - 17
Carissa - 15
Chris - 15
Ian - 14
Grey - 9
Scores (Game 2):
Chris - 23
Grey - 20
John - 19
Ian - 13
Carissa - 12
Game time (both games): 90 minutes
After much dithering, we decided to play a game of Agricola. It was the first game for Carissa, while the others had all played once or twice. Again I was struck by how differently the game plays with 5. With 5 there's more reed, there's more wood (*but* it is concentrated in fewer action spaces), and it's much easier to pick up some early stone and/or animals.
I got cards that let me very quickly expand my house, and I got the early jump on getting my family to 4 people, granting me more actions, but also putting me on the hook for a lot of food to feed them. As a result, I wasn't able to use my actions terribly efficiently, occasionally having to just grab 3 three food to make it through the harvest.
In contrast, Ian set up a very efficient sheep-based food engine with the help of a couple minor improvements, but he had a much harder time adding rooms and family members. However, because he didn't have to worry too much about food, he was able to maximize the efficiency of his actions. In the end, it was an extremely close game. The fact that such dramatically different approaches yielded 4 points of differential between the top 4 spots speaks well of the game balance and the multiple paths to victory. Grey was playing the game under some amount of duress and also offers that he was born illiterate.
Scores:
Chris - 38
Ian - 37
John - 36
Carissa - 35
Grey - 17
Game time: 210 minutes
Cosmic Encounter
Cosmic Encounter has recently undergone its 4th instantiation. This time it has been given a very attractive and enjoyable makeover by the bits whores at Fantasy Flight. It was about time someone washed the bad taste of the Avalon Hill version out of our collective mouths, and Fantasy Flight did just that, keeping the one nice thing about that version (the better production values) but adding back in a whole truckload of the alien powers from the Eon and Mayfair editions, plus some new ones of their own. They also did a pretty credible job of minimizing rules vagaries and contradictions, which is hard to do in a game whose basic premise is: "here are the rules, ok now everyone has a power and a bunch of cards that break those rules".We played with 4. I definitely had the alien power with the best name: The Masochist ("You have the power to hurt yourself"). The effect of my power was to win the game if I managed to lose all of my ships. I misplayed it a bit - what I should have done was try to win normally and used the power if I happened to get into a situation where I might be able to lose my last few ships. Instead I set right out attempting to lose as many ships as I could, which led to me sabotaging a battle I was allied in, which led to no one asking me to ally anymore.
Despite all that, Grey and I had a chance for a shared victory, but I passed on it, only to have Ian and John grab a dishonorable shared victory a couple of turns later.
Scores:
Ian (Human) - 5
John (Fodder) - 5
Grey (Will) - 4
Chris (Masochist) - 3
Game Time: 60 minutes
Witch's Brew
One of my favorite less ballyhooed games, Witch's Brew is a card game in which players collect ingredients to brew potions that are worth points at the end of the game. The game is played in a series of "sets", and in each set, players choose 5 actions out of a total of 12. It is important to try to be aware of what actions other players might play and plan your actions accordingly, and this leads to some enjoyable Princess Bride battle of wits situations ("He must have picked this action. But of course he would have known that I would think that, so perhaps he did not choose that action. etc. etc.").We played 2 games of this (it is quite short), and realized that we probably should have swapped around the seating order between games, as seating order is critically important in this game. Next time gadget. Next time.
Scores (Game 1):
John - 17
Carissa - 15
Chris - 15
Ian - 14
Grey - 9
Scores (Game 2):
Chris - 23
Grey - 20
John - 19
Ian - 13
Carissa - 12
Game time (both games): 90 minutes
Agricola
After much dithering, we decided to play a game of Agricola. It was the first game for Carissa, while the others had all played once or twice. Again I was struck by how differently the game plays with 5. With 5 there's more reed, there's more wood (*but* it is concentrated in fewer action spaces), and it's much easier to pick up some early stone and/or animals.I got cards that let me very quickly expand my house, and I got the early jump on getting my family to 4 people, granting me more actions, but also putting me on the hook for a lot of food to feed them. As a result, I wasn't able to use my actions terribly efficiently, occasionally having to just grab 3 three food to make it through the harvest.
In contrast, Ian set up a very efficient sheep-based food engine with the help of a couple minor improvements, but he had a much harder time adding rooms and family members. However, because he didn't have to worry too much about food, he was able to maximize the efficiency of his actions. In the end, it was an extremely close game. The fact that such dramatically different approaches yielded 4 points of differential between the top 4 spots speaks well of the game balance and the multiple paths to victory. Grey was playing the game under some amount of duress and also offers that he was born illiterate.
Scores:
Chris - 38
Ian - 37
John - 36
Carissa - 35
Grey - 17
Game time: 210 minutes
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