Gaming Session - rats are back

We had some of the old, some of the new, and a mixture in between. We played Panic Station - man I love that game! It was actually a fairly short game, I was the host and a unfriendly set of room draws made for a bad set-up for the uninfected. Normally for the infected it is not as suspenseful, but the place was crawling with parasites and we all lost half of our health just a few turns in and I didn't know if anyone would survive. All that was needed was to infect one other person, have other suspicious people kill each other, a grenade lob, and wham - humans lost. I wanted to play again immediately.



When then played some Dominion with the new card set Dark Ages which includes a ton of cards and many new additions to the game. We played only with expansion cards and I got smoked in the game, but it was alot of fun with the new cards. With so many cards they must be up to more game card combinations than our nation's deficit, if that is possible. There is a lot of trashing ability with the DA cards, you start with shelters instead of estates, and you can give other players ruins cards that seem as bad as curses and clog your deck.







We ended by playing Rattus with the Africanus expansion that increases the board to northern Africa and can be played with 5-6 players now. The game is about the black plague in 1347 spread by rats and you select characters and place population for yourself, but when you move the plague it takes other players population away. It has a great mechanic for doing this that takes some forethought on your moves. The game ends when a player has all his population on the board or the plague runs out. I was doing pretty well, but Nate planned better for the end and moved past me on the last turn.

Gaming Session

Fall semester now back in swing, it is game night again! There were many in attendance, so some played Shadow Hunters while I taught a group to play Danish 21, one of my favorite card games from my mission in Denmark. Everyone is dealt 7 cards an values are normal, except 8 is considered the highest card above an Ace. You can trade in a few cards if there are some in the remaining deck. In turn you lay a card opn the pile, it has to be equal to or higher than the previous card, or you MUST lay your lowest. The goal is to have the lowest card in the end. Down to the last card everyone reveals, whoever has the highest card "loses" and keeps that card. The deck is reshuffled and the next round you get as many cards as the number of the card the last person lost with. You keep playing rounds until one person has cards that they lost with that totals 21 or more.

From there we then played a similar card game called the Great Dalmuti, another game that works with larger numbers. In that deck there is one 1, two 2s, three 3s, etc. up to the number twelve. In this one you lay down as many of the SAME card that you have, and the next player lays down the same amount of a number lower than the previous or passes. When everyone passes the player with the last cards on top "takes" it and gets to lead out. Who ever goes out first is the new one to take the position of Great Dalmuti and sits in the order of how you went out: Great Dalmuti, Lesser Dalmuti, Merchants (any number), Lesser Peon, Greater Peon. You try to move up out of the lower classes for a higher poisition, and other rules in the game make that hard to do. I have always love that game.





I was also able to teach the game Hawaii that I liked so much from Strategicon. We played with four players and I went for a boat/island strategy to earn points and ended up swamping the others. Of course I was the only one that had played it before. Again I like the variability in playng the game, and there are many pathways for victory points.

My collection of villages

We did have a special visitor tonight, a stupid fly that keep landing on our game boxes and rolling over. We thought it was dead, but everytime we moved the box it would hop up and then fly away only to later come back on the box and roll over. Freaking me out.

Strategicon Gateway 2012, Day 3

My third day on Monday at the convention was fairly short where I spent most of my time at the auction and actually helping other players with games. I did get to try Noblemen, a new game that will be published by Tasty Minstrel Games and is not yet in the US, it was a winner a few years back of the Hippodice game design competition in Germany. I was able to get TMG employee and a game designer in his own right (Eminent Domain), Seth Jafee to teach it. It is actually a really good game with euro-style mechanics of tile laying and action selection, and it has many things going on but they all work fairly seemlessly together. This will be one to look for when they print it over here.

Designer Seth Jafee

Strategicon Gateway 2012, Day 2

Designer Ta-Te Woo

A longer second day at the convention as it was Saturday, but fewer games played as I spent a lot of time at the flea market and chatting with others. I did get to spend some time with Ta-Te Woo, another game designer who is from here locally in Southern Cal and attends some of the SoCal Playtesters group that I have attended. He has a current game on Kickstarter (a groupfunding site) called The Battle of Red Cliffs and I was able to play some of that. It is a card game where you try to match sets of different numbers and colors on cards, and you keep one card from each set for a final scoring in each round to help you move up different levels. Fairly simple with some strategy, but not too exciting and I didn't feel in control of my choices. Also completely abstract with no real connection to the theme which is a let-down for me. In the little tournament we played I did ribbon by coming in first place.

 
I was able to play a game that I actually purchased last year and have always wanted to play but never found the time, the 2006 Spiel des Jahres award winner Thurn and Taxis. What better way to learn than to enter an official tournament for it! Thankfully they took 10 minutes to explain how to play, and I could tell I was among grizzled veterans. The guy running the tournament tried to help me with my first turn, but I caught on pretty quick and could manage. The game has you creating postal routes of a specific city length in the 17th century in Europe. You must create them by collecting city cards and placing postal houses in lengths from 3-7 and collect various bonuses due to regional colors and combinations. I was pretty aggressive and surprised them by winning and ending the game quicker than they thought. I moved onto the finals and took 2nd place overall! The game is not too complex, but more meaty than Ticket to Ride. I'm glad that I have it!




Beginning my winning route

Due to my run at T&T, I  missed out on the Village tournament I wanted to be in. But I did get to play another game that I own, but have not played, Antione Buaza'a Mystery Express. I thought it was like Clue, but I was wrong, and Antione was there to teach us. It is a deductive game where you need to solve a murder on a train, but you need to find out who, where, with what, why (motive) and even the time! It uses some good mechanics in tracking cards by you selecting actions on each leg of the journey. It actually plays pretty smooth, I had the most trouble with the time part. I actually did pretty well and tied for second.