Games Played this Week: 13
Dominion x7
Space Alert x3
Fairy Tale x1
Word on the Street x1
Alhambra x1
New Games Played this Week: 1
Fairy Tale
Fairy Tale: First Look
Rich was good enough to teach us Fairy Tale, a card drafting game in which you:
10 For X = 1 to 4
15 Draw 5 Cards
20 For Y = 1 to 3
30 Gosub 100
40 Next Y
50 Gosub 200
60 Next X
70 Score
80 Profit
100 Pick card
110 Pass other cards to left
120 Return
200 Play card
210 Resolve card scoring impact (flip and unflip cards)
220 Return
And when your kids ask you what the hell that was, just tell them that's how we did it back in the day. Atari 400 4 life.
Space Alert: So this is it. We're all going to die
I've just received this game on Tanga. Yeh, a fellow Just Awesome patron and card-sleeving enthusiast just got it as well. We played his copy 3 times. It was the first time I'd played since one session in September, so naturally I was made captain, and naturally this led to our rapid failure in the Kobayashi Maru. We rebounded and pulled off a narrow victory in a second (and harder) training mission, and then we got drilled in an exciting, but eventually futile actual mission. There are 2 kinds of games: games of deep thought and quiet contemplation, and games of shouty fun. This is the second one.
Word on the Street: Heavy is so a type of metal
Sean and I played husband and wife (I assume) Steve and Anne Marie at this and pulled off a narrow victory, despite Steve's eyebrow raising at my giving "heavy" and an answer for "a type of metal." If I knew how to spell it, I would have answered something Finnish with like 3 Gs and a bunch of umlauts that translates to "music to kill babies by".
Alhambra: Putting the Ham back in Albra
It is possible I am running out of clever headings. While waiting for the Just Awesome Dominion tournament to begin, I taught Tim and his sons Lucas and Andrew (who is younger so played on a team with Tim) Alhambra. We only got through 2 of 3 rounds, but they enjoyed the game enough that Tim was pretty sure he was going to order the big box (the game plus a bunch of expansions) online.
Dominion: There can be only one
Just Awesome hosted a $20 buy-in Dominion tournament on Sunday. It was supposed to be 12 people, but ended up with 11 as we had a late cancellation. The card sets will all put together by noted Agricola enthusiast Izaac, who was unable to attend. I played a couple games during the week and lost them all, so that was auspicious.
Game one: Base set plus Intrigue
In this game, the Izaac included both the Gardens (which give you points for having a big deck) and the Chapel (which allows you to trim your deck down to an efficient Province-buying machine). My previous experience had taught me that if there were any cards that granted extra buys, Gardens tended to win that fight. The set included Festival, which is arguably the best extra buy card there is, so I opted to make my deck as big as I could. I didn't execute as well as I would have liked, but I managed to eke out a 1 point victory.
Game two: Base set plus Seaside
The dominant feature of the Seaside expansion is the inclusion of duration cards - cards that stick around for an additional turn and have a secondary effect. Izaac threw us for a loop in this game by avoiding those cards entirely and instead setting up a fairly brutal attack environment: Sea Hags and Witches and Ambassadors, oh my! A few of us took early hags and the curse deck was exhausted fairly quickly. I grabbed several moats and Bazaars so I could use more than one of them to draw. Despite ending the game with 10 curses in my hand I still won by a relatively comfortable 5 points.
Game three: Base set plug Alchemy
The Alchemy game ended up being about the ne plus ultra card from the set: Possession. This card lets you take a turn with your opponent's deck. Casey ended up with 2 possessions fairly early and used them to fantastic effect against Bertrand, so despite the fact that Bertrand probably built the strongest deck overall (he managed to pull off the rare double-province buy on one turn), he ended up coming in last with 24 (and in fact the double buy ended up being the only provinces he got). I was only a bit better with 29, and Casey ran away with it with 40.
Game four: The final five
The final game featured cards from all five sets. Of particular note were the Golem (keep turning over cards until you get 2 action cards, then play both), Scrying Pool (keep turning over cards until you turn over a non-action card, and keep everything you drew), and Vineyard (1 point per 3 action cards). I had been beaten soundly by a Vinyard strategy in the past and I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, the game just ended too fast for my strategy to be effective. The players who focused on money (and who managed to simultaneously grab VPs with the 2 money/2 VP Harems) won out easily and I came in last.
Honorable to 3rd place contestant and recent Hawaii emigrant Sean who constructed a deck containing only a Golem and 2 Wharves (+2 cards, +1 buy on this turn and the next turn) as action cards, guaranteeing himself simultaneous 9-card turns every time he drew the Golem.
Congratulations to Patrick and Topher who placed first and second. Patrick in particular really dominated the tournament, winning twice, tying for 1st once, and placing second once in his 4 games.
Fun fact: Names at the final table were Chris, Topher, Patrick, Sean, Casey, combining to spell the names of former Cal basketball played Patrick Christopher and former Reds first baseman Sean Casey. Things you need to know.
Dominion x7
Space Alert x3
Fairy Tale x1
Word on the Street x1
Alhambra x1
New Games Played this Week: 1
Fairy Tale
Rich was good enough to teach us Fairy Tale, a card drafting game in which you:
10 For X = 1 to 4
15 Draw 5 Cards
20 For Y = 1 to 3
30 Gosub 100
40 Next Y
50 Gosub 200
60 Next X
70 Score
80 Profit
100 Pick card
110 Pass other cards to left
120 Return
200 Play card
210 Resolve card scoring impact (flip and unflip cards)
220 Return
And when your kids ask you what the hell that was, just tell them that's how we did it back in the day. Atari 400 4 life.
I've just received this game on Tanga. Yeh, a fellow Just Awesome patron and card-sleeving enthusiast just got it as well. We played his copy 3 times. It was the first time I'd played since one session in September, so naturally I was made captain, and naturally this led to our rapid failure in the Kobayashi Maru. We rebounded and pulled off a narrow victory in a second (and harder) training mission, and then we got drilled in an exciting, but eventually futile actual mission. There are 2 kinds of games: games of deep thought and quiet contemplation, and games of shouty fun. This is the second one.
Sean and I played husband and wife (I assume) Steve and Anne Marie at this and pulled off a narrow victory, despite Steve's eyebrow raising at my giving "heavy" and an answer for "a type of metal." If I knew how to spell it, I would have answered something Finnish with like 3 Gs and a bunch of umlauts that translates to "music to kill babies by".
It is possible I am running out of clever headings. While waiting for the Just Awesome Dominion tournament to begin, I taught Tim and his sons Lucas and Andrew (who is younger so played on a team with Tim) Alhambra. We only got through 2 of 3 rounds, but they enjoyed the game enough that Tim was pretty sure he was going to order the big box (the game plus a bunch of expansions) online.
Dominion: There can be only one
Just Awesome hosted a $20 buy-in Dominion tournament on Sunday. It was supposed to be 12 people, but ended up with 11 as we had a late cancellation. The card sets will all put together by noted Agricola enthusiast Izaac, who was unable to attend. I played a couple games during the week and lost them all, so that was auspicious.
In this game, the Izaac included both the Gardens (which give you points for having a big deck) and the Chapel (which allows you to trim your deck down to an efficient Province-buying machine). My previous experience had taught me that if there were any cards that granted extra buys, Gardens tended to win that fight. The set included Festival, which is arguably the best extra buy card there is, so I opted to make my deck as big as I could. I didn't execute as well as I would have liked, but I managed to eke out a 1 point victory.
The dominant feature of the Seaside expansion is the inclusion of duration cards - cards that stick around for an additional turn and have a secondary effect. Izaac threw us for a loop in this game by avoiding those cards entirely and instead setting up a fairly brutal attack environment: Sea Hags and Witches and Ambassadors, oh my! A few of us took early hags and the curse deck was exhausted fairly quickly. I grabbed several moats and Bazaars so I could use more than one of them to draw. Despite ending the game with 10 curses in my hand I still won by a relatively comfortable 5 points.
The Alchemy game ended up being about the ne plus ultra card from the set: Possession. This card lets you take a turn with your opponent's deck. Casey ended up with 2 possessions fairly early and used them to fantastic effect against Bertrand, so despite the fact that Bertrand probably built the strongest deck overall (he managed to pull off the rare double-province buy on one turn), he ended up coming in last with 24 (and in fact the double buy ended up being the only provinces he got). I was only a bit better with 29, and Casey ran away with it with 40.
The final game featured cards from all five sets. Of particular note were the Golem (keep turning over cards until you get 2 action cards, then play both), Scrying Pool (keep turning over cards until you turn over a non-action card, and keep everything you drew), and Vineyard (1 point per 3 action cards). I had been beaten soundly by a Vinyard strategy in the past and I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, the game just ended too fast for my strategy to be effective. The players who focused on money (and who managed to simultaneously grab VPs with the 2 money/2 VP Harems) won out easily and I came in last.
Honorable to 3rd place contestant and recent Hawaii emigrant Sean who constructed a deck containing only a Golem and 2 Wharves (+2 cards, +1 buy on this turn and the next turn) as action cards, guaranteeing himself simultaneous 9-card turns every time he drew the Golem.
Congratulations to Patrick and Topher who placed first and second. Patrick in particular really dominated the tournament, winning twice, tying for 1st once, and placing second once in his 4 games.
Fun fact: Names at the final table were Chris, Topher, Patrick, Sean, Casey, combining to spell the names of former Cal basketball played Patrick Christopher and former Reds first baseman Sean Casey. Things you need to know.
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