Thursday, April 12, 2012

Frakkin' Toasters!

That was an intense game of BSG last night.

As President Baltar, I ended the game with 5 You Are Not A Cylon cards. Is that some sort of record?

We had a 5-player game, with 2 newbies on board. We decided to play with the base game, Destination Kobol, all the rest of Pegasus except for Cylon Leaders, and the Cylon Fleet Board from Exodus (plus all of the crises, skillcards, characters, etc); regular old Loyalty with Pegasus-style Executions.

The game was Baltar (me) -> Helo (Max) -> Starbuck (Kevin) -> Kat (Sean) -> Tory (Andrea)

Admiral Helo tipped his loyalty a little bit early, when he was forced to discard cards and didn't choose to dump the Treachery he had picked upf rom an earlier crisis. Good eyes, Kevin!
So, Helo was brigged early and stayed there until he decided Revealing was his best option.

It wasn't until the Sleeper Phase that Starbuck joined the toaster crew..

They also managed to get 2 of the strongest Super Crises.. Bomb on Colonial One (which we thankfully passed) and Fleet Mobilization (which we also passed, but it was too late).

Long story short, with our severe shortage of Engineering, we were unable to repair the ship quickly enough. In the end, we were swarmed by Raiders, at a mere distance of 4, and were blown to smithereens.

Our one hopeful moment was a very well-rolled nuke, which blew up 2 Basestars, 6 Raiders, and 2 Heavies at once. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out in the long run...


Thursday, April 5, 2012

PGWJ, April Fool's Week edition

This week was a PlayGamesWithJosh session that I think is worthy of a brief report...

We had our usual core of 3 players. Myself, "Uncle" Max, and "KatⒶstrophe" Kevin.
Good Recruiter Kevin almost got us another 4th (like he did last week) but unfortunately she bailed.

Nonetheless, we got some serious gaming done with 3 people.

It started with 2 rounds of 7 Wonders, which was originally a way to pass time until the 4th arrived.
The jury is still out on Leaders, and we didn't use them for either game.
The games passed quickly.. the first game ended in a tie which I won on money, and I somehow managed to win the second game as well. This is also notably the first time I've ever seen Max end a game with a negative (or even low) Military score.

Next. thanks to the first episode of Wil Wheaton's new TableTop web-series, we got out my gigantic box of boxes of Small World.
(I should post a picture of that ridiculously over-organized setup)
I have all the expansion stuff of SW from before Underground came out. Again, coincidentally, we played without the Leaders expansion for a game, and we also didn't use the Tales & Legends "Event Deck" (which I have never used).

I don't remember the entire progression of race/power combos, but one notable appearance was Kevin's Seafaring Priestesses, with the power to build a literally indestructible (until you go into decline with your second race) tower in decline. One of my favorite combos, but it turns you into a big target. The tower ended up with only a value of 3, after planned attacks against it.
In the end, Max won by a single coin.
And cleanup was a breeze! Thanks, Really Useful Boxes!

Finally, we played Power Grid.
We used the Korea map, which I had bought but never tried before (and no, Matt, we didn't use your house rules on this; we used the rules as printed).
The 2 markets really made it interesting, especially after I made a relatively early nuclear plant grab.
Somehow, despite my constant math errors (which all got corrected), I managed to pull a win out..
Also minorly notable: We were somehow missing the entirety of the coal cubes, so we used blue houses instead. Luckily, I was able to find them in the back seat of my car in a hidden Really Useful Box (transportation incident from last time I brought the game somewhere).

Next week, despite dietary restrictions, I think we might have an even better turnout. Can't wait!