September 26th: Games with Trevor and Hilary, but not at once...

Another Saturday, another Cal game, another time Trevor comes over to play games.

Memoir '44

Before Trevor came over, Hilary and I played one more game of Memoir '44, this time the Operation Luttich scenario. Operation Luttich was a German counterattack that took place shortly after the Normandy invasion. In real life, the counterattack failed - the remnants of the elite Panzer Lehr division were unable to defeat the allied forces. In this game, the Germans (played by me) managed to eke out a narrow victory (4-3), and I got the dubious honor of granting the Nazi's a victory that had eluded them in real life. Actually, Memoir '44 takes some pains to avoid any thing, umm, Nazi-flavored.

Gheos

The Cal game was merrily TiVoing along when Trevor came over, so Trevor and I decided to play a game first so we could then fast-forward through commercials. Seriously, I don't know how I ever had the patience to watch anything before TiVo. Anyway, the game I pulled out was Gheos, a tile-laying game that is probably best described as a combination of Carcassone and Tigris and Euphrates. Well, it's probably best described that way to people who have played those two games, anyway. For those who haven't: players take the role of gods - the ancient, petty and warlike kind. They take turns laying down or replacing triangular tiles and creating civilizations (realistically represented by different colored discs). Players attempt to manipulate the discs...err...civilizations into conflicts and migrations such that the civilizations that they have the most influence with are in the strongest position, thus scoring points. Nothing gods like more than points!

It's a clever little game, and a good answer if people complain about Carcassone not having enough interaction (the other answer is "then you're not playing right").

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: Deluxe Edition

Finally. A game with two colons. Somewhat appropriate in the "reaching desperately for a joke" sense since the steaming pile that Cal put out between the last game and this one would have required at least two. Well, time for Cal Football to start acting like Cal Football again.

Trevor and I played a couple games of Stratego for grown-ups i.e. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: Deluxe edition. Like Stratego, players have units of different values that move about on the board, but you can only see your opponent's unit when they actually encounter each other. However the game both takes away (each player has only 9 pieces) and adds to (each unit on each side has a unique ability, and the two sides have differing victory conditions) the Stratego model and does a pretty credible job of integrating the Lord of the Rings theme. The reason this is the deluxe edition is because it includes a whole seperate set of characters for a whole different feel of game, but I haven't had the chance to try those out yet.

Dominion

Stop me if you've heard this one, but Hilary and I played Dominion. It felt like Hilary turned something of a corner in this game as she really used the action cards to her advantage, the picture above showing a particularly long chain she got off in a single turn. The kingdom card set we got was particularly good for this with the Throne Room, Labratory, and Pawn, and she did a nice job taking advantage of it and exploited my tendancy to rely too heavily on deck pruning. Curse you Magic: The Gathering roots!