Red Dwarf X: Entangled

Wow.. this was.. actually a good episode.

I think it's pretty solid Series 6 fare. It would fit right in to S6 if not for the actual ship.

And it even, maybe unintentionally, had some minor Star Wars references in it.. losing your ship in a game of cards, "I've got a bad feeling about this"...

I don't really have anything negative to say about this one, surprisingly. All of the little continuity flubs in this one are no big deal.

The only question now is: What is up with Kochanski? Seems like they're looking for her, like she's gone missing, or something...

Red Dwarf X: Lemons

"Lemons", the latest episode, takes the crew through another quasi-believable time travel mechanism (not an inherently bad thing; this show is really good at that), winding up in the year 23 AD, on Earth, in England.

It's a little bit contrived that yet again, their time travel widget takes them 3 million years through space onto Earth, but we'll accept that. This is even lampshaded by Cat when they first get there.

It's extremely contrived that everyone speaks English, but again we'll forgive this point, because translation jokes would have just made the episode stupider and more boring. Even "Why is there an H on your forehead, and why does your friend look like a chewed-up eraser?" doesn't need to be gone through yet again. Calling Kryten a gladiator was enough.

So, after Jesus reads about "Himself" and gets all depressed about it, you'd also think that maybe Lister would empathize. This is exactly what Dave went through in Waiting for God. They missed a great opportunity for a touching conversation between 2 reluctant gods and how they may have been misquoted, or their deeds misunderstood, even if it turned out that this wasn't really Jesus Jesus.

Rimmer mentions that his parents were members of the "Church of Judas". But we all know -- from the same episode where we learned about Lister's cardboard-box past, "The Last Day" -- that Rimmer's parents were Seventh Day Advent Hoppists ("Faith, hop and charity"). Maybe two names for the same thing, I suppose.

Also: How does Cat really know or care who Jesus is? Again, Cat's god is Cloister the Stupid, and human religion is irrelevant to his people. Sometimes I think the writers forget that Cat is a Cat except when convenient.  At all other times, he's an overgrown 5-year-old with unique fashion sense and sharp teeth.

Kryten also shouldn't be all that impressed with Jesus, but at least he spent his formative years around humans.

There is another trademark inconsistency in this episode that's almost endearing: comments about Shakespeare. Every time Shakespeare comes up, the characters' knowledge of him is whatever the plot requires of them. Whether Rimmer is referring to him as "Wilfred Shakespeare", or learning about Wilma in the Parallel Universe, or reciting that famous "Now" speech from Richard III, or coming up with a convenient way to introduce "skullet" into the lexicon...  It's not the only anachronistic cultural reference that the show has ever made, and it's not really a fault; it's just interesting that Shakespeare in particular keeps coming up like this.

Oh, yeah, and: If they were in search of battery power, why didn't anybody think to suggest Kryten's power supply or Rimmer's Light Bee power supply instead of their quest for citric acid? Not even as an insult-joke?

All the rest of that ignored, the jokes in this episode were alright, and the resolution was enough not to mess up all of human history too badly.  This is still on the level of "mediocre middle seasons", and better than Series 8, but it is not as good as Trojan was promising the series would be.

3 more episodes to go, let's see whether they can bring it on home.

Red Dwarf X: Fathers and Suns

Have just seen the second episode of the new season of Red Dwarf, "Fathers and Suns".
Disregarding the continuity concerns for a moment, I wasn't too fond of the episode. Other than the whole tape gag (with a nice continuity nod here, being a VHS), the rest was stale. The uncomfortably awkward episode-long joke about racism was just .. gah. The mention-in-passing of Holly was downright offensive to fans (and probably to poor Norm and Hattie), and the new by-the-book computer was certainly no Queeg.

So..
Dave Lister is coming to terms with being his own dad. This seals this in some awkward continuity where Season 7 had to have happened, but other things are not quite in sync.
Best fanwank guess is that they're in the "other universe" Red Dwarf that the crew escaped to in the "series finale" of season 8.. but that doesn't explain where Kochanski is, or why hologram Rimmer is a chicken soup repairman, since in that universe, Rimmer was the Captain.
And while Lister is talking about parenthood, there's absolutely no acknowledgement about his firstborn twins?  Technically he's their mom, but still.. come on.

..And on a more minor note, where did that "doctor-bot" come from? On the Red Dwarf I know, the only automated doctor was the skutter who couldn't be trusted to open a can of beans.

If the first episode was a GRRR on the arbitrary Ossian quality scale, this one is more like a GRP (barely registering that second R).

I will watch the rest of it, and I will buy the Bluray or DVD, but I'll continue to keep my expectations low.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

I played XCOM back when it came out in the 90s. I think it was one of those games that quaintly came out on CDROM just to avoid having to include multiple floppies -- the entire installation was maybe 10 megabytes.
I have fond memories of XCOM, but I can't remember ever actually getting more than a few missions in before the world collapsed and the game ended.
I also have a clear memory of some gaming magazine at the time, releasing a video on their included CDROM (Play videos on the world wide web? Are you nuts? That'll be the day...) which went through a heavy economic analysis of the game, pointing out that if you constantly built and sold a certain piece of equipment, you would make money yada yada.
This sort of "solving" of the game turned me off, and I think it was one of the reasons, apart from the (at least perceived at the time) insane difficulty, that stopped me from playing.

I still had fond memories of it. I like turn-based games because my reflexes suck. I liked the combination of resource management, research and tactics.

I never played any of the so-called sequels.

But then, after a long hiatus from modern computer gaming, when I picked up my new laptop a few months ago, I was looking for a new game to draw me in.  And lo and behold, I hear about XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which coincidentally is co-designed by a college friend, the guy who introduced me to this strange European boardgame called Die Siedler Von Catan (before it was printed in English), killed off my Call of Cthulhu character with a madman NPC's axe to the chest, and who also co-designed the top boardgame on boardgamegeek.
The game is also racking up all sorts of awards before it's released, and nobody can find a bad thing to say about it.

So I put my money up, preordered it on Steam, and figured maybe I'll find a little bit of time to play it over the next few months.

And then.. my 4-year-old gets sick, sick enough to stay home from school the day after the game is digitally released.  And he's home for the rest of the week.
I had to stay home with him.
This was a boon for some spare gaming time (while, yes, also doing actual Work From Home), but even then, I have a history of getting easily bored of games and walking away from them.
This game is phenomenal. It has absolutely drawn me in.

Sure there are a few little flaws in it -- like I wish there was an "undo" button for a move in combat -- and sure it's really hard.  But with all the decisions you have to balance, I am really enjoying it.

In my first attempt at playing, I made a gross underestimation.  I started in Europe (the only continent that doesn't get a monthly input of engineers), and I launched my first free Satellite in Europe (because you get bonuses for having multiple satellites in the same continent).  And, on top of that, I skipped (or failed, I forget which) the first mission which grants extra Engineers.
Now, the thing is.. You start the game with 5 Engineers.  And you can't build a Workshop (the building that gives you 5 more of them) until you've acquired some more in some other way.
So... with all of this combined, my game went several game-months without being able to build new tech.  As a result, my soldiers kept dying (I am a big fan of permadeath).. but the missions also kept getting more difficult.
I got to the point where I was sending 5 rookies to their deaths over and over, while my ever-growing supply of Scientists were devoting their lives to unimplementable theoretical research.  This did not make the world happy.  I put that game aside, despite my original insistence on playing to the bitter end.  When it stops being fun, you want to try something else.

So I started a new game.. this time shunning the tutorial, but still starting in Europe (despite the option for 5 continents in non-Tutorial mode, rather than the with-Tutorial 2), but this time I launched my first satellite in China, Asia being Engineer-heavy.
This.. seemed to start out better...
But in this scenario, I was running out of money.  Surprise surprise, when your Engineers have the ability to build stuff, you have to pay for it!
I couldn't afford to recruit new soldiers to replace the still-always-dying ones, and had to skip a few missions.
My first month's report card was a D! Much worse than in the "old" game.
But I did manage to crawl out of that pit.  I finally advanced one of my soldiers to Captain level (he's British, so I dubbed him Arnold "Ace" Rimmer), with a few other Officers beneath him.. and now that I can use alien technology properly, they don't just asplode in combat.
Even though the entire continent of Africa has abandoned me, I think I am in much better shape.

I'm still not sure what the "end game" is in XCOM -- other than, of course "you are doomed, everybody dies". But it should be a lot of fun finding out!

Red Dwarf X review, part 1: Trojan

(At this point, I will stop apologizing for not posting gaming content in awhile. It is kind of dumb that I keep starting posts with such apologies. Quick summary: I've been gaming, not as much as I would like, but it's been pretty good. And XCOM comes out tomorrow, yay!)

So.. I first discovered Red Dwarf back in the days when "channel surfing" actually happened; there was a marathon on PBS. It must have been season 3, because I distinctly remember the Backwards episode.
At this point, it wasn't clear to me that The Cat was a Cat, the Hologram was Dead, and that they mostly spent their time on the ship.  But I got hooked, pretty quickly.
A few other friends in high school were Red Dwarf fans, so we'd nerdily discuss the details and make inside jokes.

Eventually, via VHS and (mostly) PBS, I caught up with series 1-6 through high school. I also read the books, which take a different path down Continuity Lane.

When I got to college, and I had a Unix shell account (The Internet!), one of the first communities I felt comfortable in was the Red Dwarf community.  alt.tv.red-dwarf, and its sister IRC channel #starbug/#bluemidget, were where I spent a lot of time in the days before the internet was dominated by the web.
I first picked a nickname "Rimmer", but quickly changed it after I was propositioned by a person who introduced me to the other definition of the word.
Then I settled on "Legion" for the longest time (in my angsty days I always saw myself as the "sum of all parts" of the people around me), until I got sick of "Legion Of Doom" hackers threatening me to change my nick on IRC.
For most of my internet adulthood, my nickname has been "Jozxyqk", a relatively obscure Red Dwarf reference (from one of my least-favorite episodes, incidentally) that I only know of one other person (in Australia) using. My primary internet domain is lunarcity7.com (another relatively obscure reference).
I've only recently been steering my online persona away from Red Dwarf references and taking on Ossian. GRR! :)

Throughout the years, I met a few people through Red Dwarf -- while I never managed to take that trip to London or meet any of the cast/crew, I had a few visitors from around the world and traveled to meet some in person in the US. And I'm still in contact (at least facebook/twitter-level contact) with a handful. Some of you are likely reading this. Hi!
I even got a copy of the book "Last Human" signed by Doug Naylor (which does say "To Legion"), amongst other memorabilia.

Through college and the few years afterward, I managed to get VHS copies of series 7, series 8, the SmegUp/Out blooper tapes, and the "10th anniversary night" from my friends in the UK. I even scored a VHS copy of both American pilot attempts, and got to enjoy the Exit Sign Joke, the only really good thing to come out of those.

In college I had a friend introduce me to all of the Indian foods mentioned by Lister in the series, and I am still a vindaloo fan to this day thanks to Red Dwarf.
I also convinced my "science fiction literature" teacher, freshman year, to allow me to show a few episodes of Red Dwarf as a part of a unit, after he subjected us to some episodes of Star Trek (which I loved to hate).

By now, I own all of the episodes on DVD, including the special Skutter that came with Series 8. I even own the Region-2-Only Remastered "Bodysnatcher" boxset, which I've managed to watch on my computer. On that note, let's just say that I'm grateful that Grant Naylor chose to return to the originally-mastered versions of the shows as canon, unlike certain other owners of popular sci fi properties. But my completist nature forced me to watch them.

I've always said I was a bigger fan of series 1-2 than the later stuff; I preferred it when it was "a sitcom that happened to be in space", than when it was "a sci fi show with jokes".  On the other hand, I can separate the two, and I genuinely love the whole first 6 series, in their own ways.
I enjoyed pulling apart continuity errors, getting deeply involved in discussions over nothing, and generally love the show. Why else would I still be writing a blog post this long about Red Dwarf?

I didn't hate Series 7, although it was certainly a departure. I think the JFK episode, if you stripped out the Dwarf-specific references (and maybe fixed up the JFK accent a bit) is one of the most brilliant and internally-consistent JFK Conspiracy Theory stories ever.
Series 8 on the other hand -- I stand with many fans who thought it was pretty crappy. It didn't feel like Red Dwarf.  The characters, the humor, the forced situations.. We all wish we could forget it.

When I was first dating my now-wife, she was a complete foreigner (literally). 90% of my pop culture and nerd-culture references went several feet above her head. She hadn't even seen Star Wars (and that's a whole other blog post for another day)!
So when I said "you have to sit down and watch the entirety of this obscure British sci fi comedy show with me, it's called Red Dwarf", and she said "Is that the one with the Cat? I love that show!", I pretty much proposed right there.

When the "Back to Earth" special was announced, I was skeptical that it would be any good. I watched it. I was not thrilled.

So when they said "Yeah we're going to follow this up with another full series", add me to the chorus of skeptics. It's going to suck. They're too old. The magic is gone.

And here we are, with Red Dwarf X, episode 1: "Trojan".
Downloading this episode (I swear I will buy the BluRay, regardless of how I feel about the whole show!) felt a little risky, considering its name. :)
But I got it, and I watched it, together with my wife, who hadn't even been aware that it existed yet.

So.. even considering the setup of Back to Earth.. the first question is: "How did we get here?"
(Well, the zeroeth question is "how do we explain them being so much older?" but I let that one go for now)
When last we saw the crew in series continuity, Original Rimmer was long gone in his role as Ace, there was some metaphysical weirdness going on where Nanobot Alive Rimmer was kicking death in the nuts, and the rest of the Boys (and Kochanski) had escaped to a parallel universe.
Here we are on the bridge of Red Dwarf itself (another thing I'd completely let slide; the set looked amazing and nobody wants it to look like it did in the 80s).  Rimmer is Rimmer, a hard light hologram.
Lister is Lister, Cat is series 5-ish Cat. Kryten is Kryten.  Kochanski is.. where?  She gets mentioned, and not in an "is dead" way, so.. ?  Maybe she was just in the bathroom for this whole episode?
And, naturally, Holly is where?  Or at least some sort of ship computer which doesn't require these 4 idiots to manually pilot a 5-mile-long ship?

If we were taking this episode on its own, it would make sense that it was in a "Series 7 never happened, this picks up a little bit after series 6" kind of timeline. But blurbs about future episodes say that Lister is wrestling with the idea of being his own father, which means at least Series 7 must have happened, with Kochanski as part of the crew.
Also, ignoring all of the unlikelihoods of encountering another ship where they are (or a robot home shopping network) for the sake of sanity:
Howard Rimmer is just all wrong. First of all, why is he a hard-light hologram? It makes sense that Arnie was one, because the brilliant scientist Legion converted him. It even, OK,  makes sense that Ace (the last Ace before Arnie took over), was hard-light, because it is his job to be awesome and perfect and Better Than Rimmer.
But Howard being hard-light is just a sign of lazy writing, or an interesting backstory that warranted a mention, perhaps.
Second, we've already seen Howard (and the other brothers) as being these amazing Space Corps Officers, so how does it make sense that he was a chicken soup machine repairman, no better than the runty little brother he used to cover in fire ants?
Third -- and most strange -- he claims that the "attack" that wiped out his crew was fairly recent, and his Simulant Friend has just been hanging out with him not doing anything evil since then. How's that, exactly, unless they've traveled through a time bubble back 3 million years? (which maybe they did; see the First Question)
Or maybe that entire thing was an Artificial Reality test.  Arnie is no stranger to being the center of those kinds of situations.
Will we get an explanation? Maybe, maybe not.

All that being said, you'd think I hated the episode. But I liked it. I genuinely liked it!
The character relationships, and the jokes, were very reminiscent of the "middle seasons", the most comfortable era of the show. Even where the jokes fell flat, they fell flat in exactly the same way as those old seasons. It's orders of magnitude better than Series 8 and that BTE special.
As the credits rolled, my wife sang along with the theme tune, so I took that as a sign of approval as well.

I am genuinely interested in watching more, and seeing where they take things. I'd be happier if they at least pretend to address the continuity issues (other than the Space Quest IV-like "we skipped series 9 where all of this stuff happened"), but I will be at peace with that if the second episode doesn't go there.

I will try and not be too critical of the rest of the episodes, and only follow up with a reaction after the end of the series. But this seemed like a good time to start writing it all down.

7 Wonders for 7 Players

Happy (belated) New Year, Team Grr!

Over the Holiday Season, one of my gifts was the game "7 Wonders". I've been waiting to play it for weeks.

At the most recent PlayGamesWithJosh™ meeting, we were scheduled for 5 people, in which case we were going to continue our Risk Legacy game.. but then a 6th piped in, and a really-last-minute 7th.

Aha! 7 Wonders takes up to 7 players. Perfect!

Some of us were passingly familiar with the rules but hadn't really played; most of us hadn't played before at all.

Just around 7:45pm:

We assigned one person in charge of the rules (I'm a terrible game teacher), went over them a little bit, and decided to just start playing. We used all 7 wonders (obviously) on their "A" sides.

As soon as we had our first hands of cards, there was an immediate screech to a halt, questions popping up everywhere about what symbols meant what, how things interacted, etc etc.

Oh crap, this game is going to take all night!

Not so..

A few rounds in, a few mistakes made, we started getting the hang of things (except Science).

We finished the first game in under an hour, even with our slowdowns (including the inevitable part of the Third Age where everyone has to look up symbols again) and the arrival of pizza.

Then the Rules Guy actually explained how Science was scored, and that made a bit of a difference.

So, we went on to Game 2, wherein we would start with a fresh understanding of the game.

Of course, some of us decided to go more heavily into Science in Game 2 (especially me), and it showed.

After Game 2, "wow, that went fast."

We played a third game, this time with everyone using Side B.

This game really flowed well, and felt solid.

I can't wait to play again.

Specific personal opinions:
I like the fact that you can "do your own thing", but still have to be aware of what the guys on your left and right are doing. What resources they have, how much military they've got, and (to some extent) "hate-drafting" (taking a card just so the guy to your left/right doesn't get it).

I like the fact that it is a FAST game with SEVEN players. Damn, dude. A 7-player game of BSG could take 6 hours :)

I like the fact that the meanings of the icons are intuitive, after you've seen a few. The colors, the arrows, the numbers, you could easily see a new card and immediately know exactly what it does.

The rulebook could use some work. When questions came up in the game, we eventually did find the answers in the rulebook, but they weren't always where you expected, and sometimes were in "aside statements". (Like whether you could build 2 buildings of the same name, or whether you could build multiple parts of your Wonder in the same Age, for instance).

But 7 Wonders gets a GRRRRRR (that's good) on the arbitrary Ossian Rating Scale :)

Plans for next time:
I think I'll try to make "starting player packs", a ziplock baggie with 3 coins and 2 of each positive military point, to make setup faster. (Unfortunately there aren't nearly enough "-1" chips to give everyone the potential maximum of 6 for their own pool).

Need to figure out a smooth way to randomize "side A/side B". It doesn't seem like it would work really well to rely on the facing of the Wonder cards; I don't know how to fairly randomize that. Some ideas out there?

One burning question:
Why is Science listed before Guilds in the rulebook, but after Guilds on the scoresheet?

Also:
Should the game get exercised several times before buying the Leaders expansion, or is it worth diving straight in?

Any other commentary?

MORE Gaming

Hey, a gaming post on my gaming blog!

PGWJ actually happened this past Wednesday, and it was pretty awesome.

Some old friends from college came over who I haven't seen in a bazillion years, AND we played Glen More! Twice!

So, Glen More is a pretty neat game. It is a collection of a whole bunch of little Euro mechanics in a single Scottish package. (Although, just as with many Eurogames, the theme doesn't matter).

My real only gripe with Glen More is the cube resources. A few times we had trouble telling between the Gray and White cubes in costs, and they do take away from the little bit of theme that there is. If Power Grid can have fuel that is at least roughly representative, then Glen More should have sheep that look like sheep. I might order those animeeples from Maydaygames after all.

The game itself sometimes feels like Carcassone (meeples, and tile-laying that needs to respect a river and road), but it also has trading mechanics (the market, which you can only use when necessary, so you can't deliberately monopolize a resource) and a very cool scoring system.

You get points based on the difference in how much of a Thing (chieftains, whiskey, and special locations) you have more than the person with the least.

So if you focus only on Whiskey and Distilleries, for example, then you're going to be giving away points to everyone else who has been collecting other stuff.

In the end, you actually lose significant points if you have too many tiles more than the guy with the least, which is a nice balancing factor.

The turn-order, which allows you to have an imbalance of tile numbers, is based on your meeples walking around in a perpetual circle. Really, it's easier (for me) to visualize it as one of those cartoon escape sequences, where the characters are constantly running and the path behind them is crumbling away...

The person at the end of the line gets to take a turn (pick up and activate tiles). If they're still at the end of the line, they get another turn, etc. If you jump too far ahead for a good tile, you'll be waiting around for your next turn. But if you take too many baby steps, those tiles had better net you more than 3 points each in the end.

I really like how it all fits together, and looking forward to playing it again. It even has built-in mechanics for playing with 2 players (a die that randomly eats tiles), although I'm not sure how well that plays. Worth a shot.

Glen More gets a GRRRRR on my arbitrary Ossian scale.

Session Report Catchup, in brief

Extended version might be coming soon, but this is catching up after blogger had some "issues".

Short reviews of what has been played recently:
Ticket to Ride: Big Cities seems to be the most interesting 2p variant, at least for me and my wife.

Dominion: is still a comfortable and fun game with high replay value.

Chaos in the Old World: I still feel like it is easy to feel Eliminated when you are in last place in mid-end-game and can mathematically Not Win. And it's a game that is more fun when you're winning, in my opinion. I'm still not sure why people think it is the Best Game Evar. Willing to play it more, but not rating it highly.

Illuminati: An unusual choice, pulling it out of cold storage after several years, it reminded me why the game isn't good. Aborted after it became "pure math + attack the leader," which is exactly what I remember. Maybe if we play it again, we'll include the oddball Brainwash expansion, or I'll go out and get the other 2 expansions that have surfaced in the last few years. Fat chance of playing it again at all, though.

Power Grid: Yay! I finally got to play this again. And I do like it very much. It has similarities to Chaos in the Old World in the fact that you can be losing and not be able to catch up, but for some reason it is still fun to play it out. Perhaps it's because it's simpler, I dunno. Want to play again!

More details soon, maybe.

Ticket to Ride!

Finally I got myself a copy of one of the new-classic Gateway Games, Ticket to Ride. Along with the "USA 1910" expansion which Boardgamegeek assures me is essential.

I've played TtR at least once before, I think. Or at least something like it.

Talita and I played 2 games; once with the "1910" Destinations (again, searching around BGG, this seemed to be the best suggestion for 2-player low-aggression games), and once with the "Mega Game".
She won the first, I won the second, but both games were pretty fun.
Sorry not much more exciting detail to report, but it is a solid game I hope to play more of.

Ticket to Ride gets a GRRRR on the arbitrary Ossian rating scale.

Pandemic Report

Finally got a chance to play Pandemic with some On The Brink components last night, with the wife.

We played an Easy Mode game with the Virulent Strain, then switched to Normal Mode (5 epidemics) for a few more games with the Virulent Strain and one with the Mutation Challenge (but not with both).

Overall, it doesn't seem like the OtB additions have an enormous effect on the 2 player game. Maybe it was just lucky draws, but the only time the Virulent Strain ended up having a significant effect on us was when I was playing the Dispatcher (can move other pawns around) and she was playing the role that auto-removes a cube from a city with 2+ cubes, and we drew the effect that you can't leave a virulent city without using an action to Treat it. So I couldn't move her pawn through certain cities anymore.

In the one game we played with the Mutation Challenge, we did lose, but the purple cubes had very little to do with it. There was never a point where purple cubes spread out organically, only popping onto the table from card plays.

The point at which we lost the game (which was the case in most of our games) still does feel a little bit anticlimactic. But what can you really do about that? You have to go into this game understanding that the game just stops at a certain point.

I don't count that as a huge negative, but it is a change from other games.

Another minor negative is game setup time. Whenever you start or restart the game, you have to pull out a whole bunch of cards from the player deck, sometimes pull out cards from the infection deck, reshuffle things, deal cards out, and then reshuffle one or two more times. That can get more shuffletastically annoying than Dominion, and I'm thinking maybe I will have to sleeve the Pandemic cards after all.

I'd love to give the game more of a chance, especially trying it out with more than 2 players. And the Bioterrorist looks like a spicy little variant too.

I definitely rate it at least a GRRR.

Power Grid review

(hopefully to be cross-posted to BGG)

Ah, Power Grid.
One of the top 10 rated games on boardgamegeek, it must be awesome, right?

So when my 2-year-old son (with mommy's assistance) got it for me for Father's Day, I was excited and eager to play.
Unfortunately, it's not well-touted as a 2-player game, so my wife and I played lots of Dominion (the other gifted game) and we had to wait until an appropriate time to play this one.

For the July 4th week, we were fortunate to be renting a beach house with another 2 couples, both very gamer-friendly. One of the couples was experienced in playing Grid, so that was good.
So then we all sat down for a 6 player game.

Russ insisted that we play with the "alternate power plant deck" (the official expansion that he brought) because it was somehow better; being my first time playing, I said fine that's OK.

Immediately upon opening the box, I noticed something mildly disappointing: the components.
The board is great, the instruction book is great, the power plant cards are great.
The paper money is annoying and makes it feel like Monopoly, but tolerable.
But the wooden bits were of awful quality.
Aside from one of the Green houses being "flat-roofed", none of the pieces seemed to be symmetrically cut. Houses with uneven rooves, octagonal nuclear fuel which was completely lopsided.. easily ignorable when not looking closely, but sloppy!

Gameplaywise:
The basic rules involve auctioning off randomly-drawn power plants, buying cities to power with those plants, and getting money back from your powered cities. As the game progresses, things get more expensive, and the game ends when a certain number of cities are owned by a single player, but that doesn't necessarily mean that player wins; you count how many cities you are powering instead.

I really didn't know what was going on at first, so I bought too many cities early instead of focusing on better plants. Pretty much as a direct result, I came in dead last.

Overall I enjoyed the game and I would like to play again now that I have a better idea of how it works. And I will try to ignore the poor-quality wooden bits.

From one play, I'll give it a GRRR.

A man's home is his Dominion

Played my first game of Dominion together with Talita last night.

My third game ever, but I don't think my second-ever game counted (the Black Market was involved and I just wasn't ready for that level of complexity). We used the "suggested" 10 basic kingdom cards.

I don't think either of us had any sort of early strategy; I coached her along on some basic advice coming from my gamer/CCG/drafting background, but we made some very different decisions.

By mid-game, I realized that Mining and Remodeling were both strong (including Remodeling the Mines into Gold when I didn't need them anymore), along with increased hand size; increased Buys didn't seem to be that useful, and I never bought a Copper, feeling that it would dilute my deck too much.

In the end, I had bought 6 Provinces to my wife's 2, and total score was 46-29.

The most important thing was that she liked the game and is willing to play again; the scores surely won't be that lopsided over all of the games we play.

I'm thinking that our next game might be "all-random from the base set" before we start involving the next level of complexity from Seaside, but I'll see what we agree to.

And of course, looking forward to playing the game with 3-4 players at some point.

Dominion: Definitely rates a GRRRRR