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.

Game Session

We got to play last night a game I have wanted to play again for a long time - Red November. It was one of the first of the new wave of cooperative games that were made in recent years. You are gnomes trapped on a submarine that has a variety of hazards and is going down in 60 minutes, so you work together to maintain the sub until you are rescued: putting out fires, draining flooding, fixing engines, unblocking doors and of course not letting the Kraken outside the sub crush you! It uses a unique time tracker where you allocate time to solve problems, and whoever is last on the time track is the one whose turn it is. We got a few of the rules wrong and lost a few crew members before we corrected our mistake, and the game is incredibly difficult to win. It does not have a "traitor" type element like other coop games (BSG, Shadows over Camelot, Panic Station, Sabateur), but it does have a piece of equipment (aqualung) that a player can use to abandon ship near the end of the game if they think it is going down. That actually came into play in our game. Out of our starting 8, we had only four near the finish as we lost the others to various disasters (and negligence - we forgot to open some flooded doors and comrades were drowned). I had the aqualung, and instead of repairing the overheating electrical to help my team, I ran for a hatch to escape before the sub was destroyed. Lo and behold, my lack of help caused the sub to implode - before I could escape and we all went down. Not alone in my cowardice, Josh also had an aqualung and was trying the same thing! I have never beaten this game.

I am yellow here, in more ways than one, as I look to escape with the aqualung.

We followed it up with a few games of Dominion and introducing it to Garrett, and others played Shadow Hunters. The evening's standings (that were recorded):

Red November (all lost) - Josh, Brett, Garrett, Tyler, Dallin, Nolan, Tim, Austin
Shadow Hunters W- Jon, Daniel, Dallin, Tyler; L- Nate, Nolan, Mari, Stephen
Dominion
1- Josh, 2- Brett, 3- Nate, 4- Garrett
1- Brett, 2- Tyler, 3- Nate, 4- Garrett

Gaming Friday

Another session on Friday where we played the good 'ole standby Dominion, a tight game where of course the newbie to the game Mike won! We finally got Small World to the table and it was a pretty good game. There is good variability with different matches of races to special powers that makes for some interesting decisions. We had a 5 player game, but I really didn't feel too squashed on the board (which you're supposed to, it's a small world after all). There was also some awkward down time if you just let your race stay on the board and you weren't attacked - in essence you didn't do much. It was still fun especially as we saw more strategy unfold. I am not sure if the balance in the game is great between what order you go in, and what race combination you can choose from. Some combos are definitely more powerful than others. I'm sure the game will see table-time again. As a game note, because it seemed like Tim had a lead and advantage he got ganged up on and squashed. It also happened to Josh early in the game, but still the ending scores were close and I eeked it out against Mike 105-98.

Tim's stupid Underworld Elves couldn't be defeated by my
Fortified Skeletons, but my Flying Halflings finally got him.

Nate could not make a reinforcement role for the life of him.

GAMING SESSION

Tonights session we got in a play of my proto-type Accession, which functions well as a quick strategic abstract, and a seven-player 7 Wonders, again with Leaders. The Leaders expansion adds another element, but seems too destracting for my strategies. The hit was Shadow Hunters which we played twice, a great deductive game where you are either on the Shadows (werewolves, vampires, etc.), Hunters (out to kill said monsters), or the Neutrals (in the middel of the conflict with your own winning condition). You move into different areas, generally pick from 3 sets of cards: Green Hermit - hidden questions you give to a player to find out a clue to who they are, Black - offense cards thats help you generally to attack, or White - defense cards that protect or help you heal. You can also attack players, but most of the time you do not know what team anyone is on! You can very innocently or maliciously thwart a player's efforts in this one, and there are generally multiple winners. A blast to play, even if you are Stephen who was eliminated quickly each time!

GAMING SESSION

Played Dominion as a starter, and then a group game of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion for the first time. They have many cool leaders from history included, but it took noticeably more time selecting them and using them in the game. But they added another strategic element. We then played a 5 player game of Belfort, with 4 being new to the game. Great game with many different elements involved with worker placement, building strategies, and area control, it even has dwarves, elves and gnomes units in it! There is a cool variability element with different guilds that are used in each game, but it took alot longer than expected (3 hours). Still a good game that was really close in scoring in the end.

GAMING SESSION: Dominion dominates

Dominion is truly an awesome game, and the first expansion Intrigue only makes it better. The card game has simple mechanics of play an action then buy a card, with those two actions being further enhanced by other cards. The greatest aspect of Dominion is the replayability. Each game uses only 10 kingdom cards which inteact with each other to set the table for game play. The original Dominion came with 25 kingdom cards, and Intrigue added 25 more, plus there are two promotional cards to bring the total to 52 different cards. Since only 10 are used each game, the combinations are endless giving each game a different flavor and unique strategies.

Other games with great replayability are Settlers of Catan with a differently formed gameboard each game in addition to different values and scarcity assigned to each resource. The same goes for Hey That's My Fish!, with a uniquely formed gameboard each game of over 60 tiles - the added bous is that it plays quickly and often can take less time to play than to set it up! Carcassonne is another that creates a unique gameboard each time it is played.