Sunday afternoon at the Zephyr Cafe

Now is the time on Sprokets when we mess about with the formatting.

Went to a meetup at the Zephyr Cafe (34th and Balboa) and played a few games on Sunday, September 20th.

Witch's Brew

An underrated card game where players earn points by brewing potions using cool little wooden teardrops representing the ingredients. An interesting mix of bluffing, out-guessing, and knowing when and how to take and get rid of the lead ("lead" in the bridge/hearts sense). At first blush, this game can appear to have a lot of luck, but the more I play it, the more strategic I think it is. Like poker, this game can be very rewarding when you can start getting into player's heads and thinking on multiple levels (i.e. not only "what is he thinking" but "what is he thinking I'm thinking" and "what does he think I'm thinking he's thinking").

Dominion

Played three games of Dominion. The most interesting one was the last one where I got pretty well trounced, because I had something of an epiphany about the game. This game featured the Gardens (worth more points the more cards are in your deck) and the Bridge (a card that gives you extra money, an extra card buy, and makes everything cheaper). I stubbornly pursued a strategy that employed neither of these despite the obvious powerful synergies of the cards, and got beaten by a wide margin (Jacob - 77, Me - 48, Michael - 30).

Dominion is basically a probability puzzle. Each game 10 of the 50 possible kingdom cards (with the base game plus expansion) are available, which means there are literally frillions of possible combinations. The challenge is to figure out what combination of those cards will lead to the fastest and most efficient victory-point probability engine. You do need to make some tactical decisions along the way - adjusting to the amount of money you have in a certain hand and possibly the cards other players are buying, especially if there are powerful attack cards available - but what you should be thinking about when you look at the setup of a given game is what an ideal winning deck would look like and do your best to assemble that deck as quickly as possible.

Race for the Galaxy

Still haven't played too many games with the new expansion. While I like it, I'm not sure it's as fantastic as the first one, but maybe because the game with the first expansion felt nearly unimprovable. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the second expansion is to add a few new things without feeling like the balance had been totally upset. Takeovers - the ability to steal cards from other players in certain situations - can be very powerful, but they also discourage players from just "dabbling" in a military strategy which has become quite a bit more powerful in this expansion. I've also been engaging in some Race for the Galaxy onanism with the AI developed by Board Game Geek user Keldon (http://www.keldon.net/rftg/), but it just isn't the same as a flesh and blood opponent.