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...

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!

Rex: Final Days of an Empire, first day

Yes, I bought Rex.. and yes, despite the universe trying to intervene, we got to play it once.

But with only 3 players.

Even with 3 players, it is a great game with lots of subtlety.

The Jol-Nar vs. the Lazax vs. the Sol Federation abilities combine nicely with their strengths and weaknesses.

As the Jol-Nar, my only issue is that my memory isn't perfect. FFG changed the original Dune rules so it is now illegal to write things down, so I had to remember where all the cards went in the Bidding Phase. With 3 players it was sort of easy to manage, but with 6 I can imagine the Jol-Nar are going to have some trouble keeping track.

The Sol Federation won (with the normal victory conditions) and the game took maybe 2 and a half hours, including interruptions and rule questions..

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the alliance mechanics, but hopefully we will be able to have a bigger game -- MAYBE even six players?! -- next week or some time in April.

But yes, the game has many aspects I enjoy in "gamer games". Unique powers, territory control, interesting combat mechanic, even aspects that feel like Risk Legacy without the permanent changes. (although that's a whole separate thread to think about..)

Highly recommended so far.

A rating of GRRRRRRR on the arbitrary rating scale :)

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?

A Cosmic Encounter and a Chaotic Old World

Last night's "Play Games With Josh" happened, with 4 players...

Due to the fact that I got the latest expansion for Chanukah, we decided to drag out Cosmic Encounter for the first time in awhile.

It was Ghoul vs. Fungus vs. Filth (me) vs. Remora...

We played with all of the "Optional Stuff" except for Technology (I'm not sure I really like Tech anyway).. the Hazard Deck came up with some very interesting effects; the very first Hazard that came up created a permanent alliance between the Fungus and the Ghoul, which led to some danger in the Ghoul almost winning.

There was one very strange interaction where a card (I forget which) caused players to temporary swap powers for the encounter, but then the Fungus played the Sorcerer flare, which caused permanent swappage, and by the wording of the rules (and experience with VTES's situations of temporary control effects and permanent control effects happening simultaneously), we figured that the effects basically canceled each other out.

The Filth's power came in useful as a game-balancer; I attacked a planet in Remora's system which also contained a Ghoul ship, when those two aliens were tied at 4 foreign colonies apiece.. The Ghoul actually allied with me so that he could keep his total of 4, because when I won the encounter, the Ghouls on the planet had to go to other colonies. Pretty cool.

In the end, there was an anticlimactic Shared Victory between me and the Remora, based upon us both agreeing to play Negotiate cards and swapping colonies.

I think Shared Victories are one thing that make the game "iffy". I might try to play with a house rule that you can't share a victory except where an alien power/flare allows it, to avoid silliness like this, or like the game where 4 people shared a victory before the 5th player got a turn. But I'm not sure how to mediate it. Will have to think about a variant, or see if anyone in the N-year-history of the game has similar feelings and came up with something.

After that, instead of playing 7 Wonders (my other Chanukah gift game) or Risk Legacy or anything, we played Chaos in the Old World (Matt's copy).

We used the alternative cards from the Horned Rat expansion, but not the Horned Rat god.

This was my third time playing Chaos.

I was Slaanesh, and I had yet another lukewarm experience with this game that everyone seems to love.

I got into a situation that, by no apparent misplaying of my own, I had already fallen too far behind by turn 3 or so. I could not possibly win. A combination of dice not in my favor, the regions with Nobles getting ruined quickly because they were otherwise popular, etc.

Granted, Slaanesh has a very hard time of getting dial-ticks, and maybe it was my mistake for trying that strategy, but I really felt helpless again.

I still don't rate Chaos very highly, but I'm still not ready to completely give up on it. Maybe it's one of those games that takes several plays to "get", and maybe there is a way to come back from behind that I don't see yet.

Not trying to be such a Negative Nelly with this post .. it just turned out that way :)

The Legacy Begins...

(Warning: minor spoilers ahead)
On Wednesday, December 7th, 2011, a group of 5 brave factions began to shape Earth #6730

We played the first 2 games of Risk Legacy with my set, and here's a brief report on how it broke down:

First, the first 5 of us all signed the board:

Then we chose our factions, along with the special ability that would accompany this faction forever:

Max chose the Saharan Republic, giving them the ability to Maneuver in the middle of their turn.

I chose the Enclave of the Bear, choosing the ability to obliterate a country when rolling triples and defeating at least one defender.

Tree took Imperial Balkania, with the ability to round up instead of down when recruiting troops.

Shaun took Khan Industries, with the ability to spawn an extra troop in each of his HQs each turn.

Finally, Kevin chose Die Mechaniker, whose starting HQ will always be fortified when defending.

Some joy was taken in ripping up the unused special ability stickers:

To choose the initial extra coinage on territories, we chose randomly: 8 territories with $1 extra, and 2 territories with $2 extra. I won't give an entire list here, but Europe definitely seemed to be strongly represented by this randomness.

The first game played a lot like Risk (!). Except that, instead of being a race for cards, it was actually won by a blitz that took 2 HQs.

Throughout the first game, all 5 of us laid down our Scars, starting with this one in Greenland (note that we placed this first sticker incorrectly -- completely covering the X instead of beneath it --but we'll live):

More shots from later in the game:

In the end of Game 1, it was Tree and his Balkanians that reigned Triumphant, settling in their new city of DunTree:

3 other minor cities were founded (including my contribution, "Nilbog" in Venezuela), and one territory gained an extra coin.

The second game went much more quickly, now that we understood the flow of the rules and such. Also, since we had all played our Scars in the first game, there was only one left in the box which meant nobody gets any.

We ended up taking the same factions, coincidentally, although we started in very different areas.

I started the Enclave of the Bear in Central America, and Shaun started in South America and decided to bunch up most of his troops in Venezuela.

Due to my special ability, and my general strategies in such games, I decided to try and wipe him out on Turn 1.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case.

Long story short, with "help" from Max, my faction ended up being Eliminated from the game.

WARNING: This is where there may be actual spoilers

We opened up the "Eliminated Player" packet:

.. unlocking Comeback Powers, and now the Enclave of the Bear is "Stealthy".

We also unlocked the Mercenary Scars. If our next game is with 3 or 4 players, then they'll see play; otherwise they'll have to wait, with only 4 Scars available.

Kevin founded his Major City of Mordor, and a few more Minor Cities were founded (although I wasn't able to do anything at endgame, other than take a look at my spiffy new power).

And thus ended Game 2.

Game 3 might happen this Wednesday, I hope for a quicker turnaround time on a session report...

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.

Irene didn't take down our Power Grid

Hurricane"Tropical Storm" Irene was a bit of a non-event in my neck of the woods. No stories to tell.

But after Eli went to bed, the wife and I played a game of Power Grid.

Even though we always have fun playing with the default 2-player rules, I decided to give this 2-player variant a try.

The basic differences between the base rules and that variant are:
1) The market is split 3/5 instead of 4/4. Smaller current market, more futures.
2) Only 1 house per city, regardless of Step.
3) Only 2 regions in Step 1, adding 2 extra regions in Step 2 (which starts at 7 cities).
4) In Step 2, if you have 8 or more cities, you can power 3 fewer cities with your plants. In step 3, 6 fewer.
5) Game ends at 14 cities.

I actually enjoyed the tweaks it made; it adds some interesting situations, especially when Step 2 is beginning. I had 7 cities, and could power 10. But if I bought just one more city, I would only be able to power 7. And later in the game, you can't just sit on your power plants, you have to keep bidding.

She didn't like it, because it does add a bit of confusion for people who aren't "seasoned gamers"; the official rules of Power Grid with 2 players can be a very non-gamer-friendly casual game.
So maybe we won't play it again this way, but I might suggest it for a 2-player variant with another "gamer gamer".

On the other hand:
In the end, I did win, but it was still by a narrow margin. I'm not sure if the overhead added by the variant actually changes the situation very much except a little bit of twisting your perception. It might take a few more experimental games to formulate a full opinion.

Games Played With Josh, August 17th, 2011

Five people gathered at my house for boardgames last night, and we tried out my new game Glen More...

... naw, just kidding, we played Galactica.

We chose to play with New Caprica as a destination, using all the rest of the Pegasus and Exodus components.

The characters were:

Gaeta (Kristen) ->

Baltar (me) (Cylon) ->

Cally (Matt) ->

Apollo (Max) (Cylon)->

Tori (*and Anders) (Kevin)

Predictably, I was a Cylon from the very first turn.

As soon as I was able, I spiked a check with a yellow card, and balked about it publicly when there were 3 negatives in the check. I figured, Baltar's already a suspicious character so it is best to play to that early.

For the most part, I played as a nice friendly human, because Baltar always wants to live to the sleeper phase to use his OPG.

The humans had halfway decent luck before the sleeper phase, and we hit sleeper at Distance 5.

Gaeta at this point was Pradmiral, and Tori decided that she wanted to use Administration to make herself president, to improve her special ability, without consulting anyone.

This was definitely my "in".

On my first turn after that (my first turn after sleeper), I peeked at Tori's pair of Not-A-Cylons (one of which was a personal goal but I really wasn't interested in that).

I took advantage of the suspicion of her last action, and of course called out Kevin. "Oh, Kevin, how could you?"

Apparently, this was convincing enough for Cally, because she went right over to Tori's location and discharged her firearm, revealing my lie.

At this point, I should point out that we were using a slight variant on Executions.

Instead of choosing any new character, we shuffle up the non-dead characters and deal out 3, letting the player choose 1.

Kevin's choices were grim: Boomer, Helo, or Anders, the very 3 characters who have "screwed on the first turn" as a penalty. He chose the least of the evils, Anders.

I thought this might mean Cally was my partner in crime, but it didn't take long for me to find out that I was wrong. Apollo's followup action was to Reveal, damaging 2 areas of Galactica. Evilly and thematically enough, the two damaged areas were Command and the Hangar Deck, leaving no way for vipers to get out as Galactica was swarmed with Cylons on the outside.

On Gaeta's turn, he used an Arrest Order on me (which I had been holding on to before the title was unceremoniously taken away).

I used the Political Prowess that I'd been holding on to since the very beginning as a Get Out of Jail Free card, but unfortunately, the fates would give me a crisis that had the admiral choose to send me right back to the brig.

On my following turn, I would reveal, because my Reveal Power did not need any help -- move the Jump Track back 2 spaces, when there had been 5 crises in a row without a jump icon, including one that moved the track backwards.

Did I mention that by this point, all of the raiders were on the board, and 4 Centurions were marching?!

Skipping ahead a little bit.. the next jump was apparently a choice between 2 1-distance destinations, because it left us at distance 6.

By the time New Caprica was reached (and it was), both Population and Morale were at 1, and there were 3 Centurions 2 steps along on the track.

The humans conceded, rather than perform the futile setup of the New Caprica board.

So that makes my second game with New Cap, and I still haven't fully experienced the.. experience.

Fun game :)

I'll still play Glen More, I swear!

Glen Less

Last night's "PlayGamesWithJosh" did not happen in its traditional sense.
But my wife was free and wanted to play boardgames with me, so I grabbed up that opportunity.

I have been so excited to try out Glen More since I picked it up, I set it all up and started reviewing the rules.
Now, I am not the best game-explainer, but I started to go over things with her, and.. well, her eyes just glazed over with the complications.
Glen More seems to be one of those games where you can "just start playing and figure things out as you go", but there are still a lot of bits to point out.
Therefore, the game got vetoed before you could say "I sell my sheep".

So we packed that up and put it away. It will be a game for another time.
(Incidentally, the one thing I do want to say about Glen More is that I think I might need to pick up a pack of alternative wooden meeples to represent the resources. It does cause a bit of an immersion problem, not to mention the cubes being a little too small and lose-able).

So, Power Grid came out of the box instead.
We decided to try the Spain/Portugal map, with the basic deck (no promos).
Fairly straightforward.
The special rules for Spain/Portugal are easy to explain:
If you ONLY own cities in Portugal, then you are not allowed to bid on Nuclear Power Plants.

Now, especially in 2-player, this is pretty silly. You don't have to include Portugal as one of the available regions, (not even with 6 players). Granted, it has some cheap connections, but we really only chose Portugal so we could see how it affected the whole game.
But also, by the time you are interested in nuclear power plants, I'm not sure anybody would be exclusively settling in Portugal, except for a particularly nasty cornering scenario with more players. I think this rule really has zero effect.

3 of the mid-range Wind Plants (18, 22, and 27) are removed from the deck, and placed back on top of the deck in order at the start of Step 2

I'm not sure of the justification of this rule, except to slow down access to the bigger nuclear plants in the mid-game when they are most powerful. By this time, these 3 wind plants aren't extremely desirable.

Uranium replenishes zero during Step 1.
Not so much a "special rule", but notable to the other 2 points. It starts out cheap but doesn't replenish during step 1, and replenishes best during step 2.

Overall, I think that even with more players, Spain/Portugal is kind of "meh" and doesn't change enough from the basic map that I'd really be enthusiastic about trying it again.

I really want to try out the Korea map, because it seems to have the most interesting effect on the rules (2 different markets). Maybe next time...

Play Games With Tree!

Last night, "our RPG group" (the local remnants of the Tufts SGS gamers, more-or-less, plus Matt), met at Tree's place for the first time in a few months, to start up another brand new campaign.
Hopefuilly we will be able to gain momentum on this one and actually have a few sessions.

Tree is GMing for the first time, and has chosen the Pathfinder system (similar to D&D 3.5 but with a whole bunch of tweaks).
The further restriction is that we all need to create primary Divine Casters, at level 1 (which means Clerics or Druids). He has a plan.

My character, Mara, is a Dwarf Druid.
She grew up the same way as all D&D Dwarves do; in the mines, training with the racial weapons, learning how to fight goblins and orcs, yada yada yada. Her mom and dad and siblings are all pretty standard dwarves. But, as a "teenager" (in dwarf terms that's more like late 30s/early 40s) she decided to try and "find herself" and commune with nature. And the rest is history.

Last night's session was all character-generation, and a few individual Character Preludes.
If I can glean anything from my own, he tailored a "mini-quest" for each of us which was specifically and directly given to us by our personal deities.
How this is going to draw us together is anybody's guess, especially because I'm kind of a wandering nomad and the only non-cleric (no Knowledge:Religion amongst other things).
But it should be interesting.

After all of this (and Kerri's awesome food, the major perk to gaming at Tree's house!), we played a game of Power Grid.
Man, I still suck at this game :) But it's nice to be able to play with 5 people.
Tree ended up winning with 16 cities, being able to power them all (with 5, the game ends when someone has 15+), I was still catching up.
I think I spent a little too much time in the #1 spot after buying an expensive plant early, which blocked me off from many opportunities. Some day, I'll learn!
I'm not sure if I was dead-last (we didn't play out the endgame) but I was definitely no higher than 4th place...

Hope to have more gaming again soon!

No, I don't want any toast!

PlayGamesWithJosh was a success, with an actual turnout of 5 this week.
So, no fears of playing Battlestar Galactica with an inefficient number, and that's what we did.

We played with 5 players, Ionian Nebula as the Destination.
The only "house rule" we used was including Scar in the decks (which was moot), and we took the "trauma tokens in a bag" shortcut which involves not putting physical tokens in Sickbay/Brig or on the initial 3 allies (just draw as appropriate; only will cause a problem if a character with no trauma tokens visits an ally).
At the last minute, despite setting aside some Cosmic Encounter UFOs for it, I decided to give up on the similar plan for Civilian Ships; with only 12 of them, maybe it's not such a big deal.

So, on to the show, here's the short version of how it broke down:

Tori (Shaun) (Cylon from the beginning) ->
Starbuck (Matt) ->
Dee (Me) ->
Gaeta (Kevin) (Cylon inherited from Tori) ->
Chief (Max)

I won't bore you with lots of details, partly because I don't remember (I might even get the details I do share wrong) and partly because I don't need to sound like this (even though this is actually a gamer blog): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5TxzDY_sEk

Tori was a Cylon from her very first Loyalty Card. And Shaun was playing it really well, we trusted him.
Enough so that, when he felt the time was right, he revealed on an XO from Gaeta (damaging Galactica; the peculiar ruling came up where the Current Player got to choose the Pegasus/Galactica ratio of the 5 damage tokens).
I can't even tell you what was going on at the time, to be honest, except that Tori had no Trauma.

At some point which I _think_ was before Sleeper Phase, President Gaeta and I were both in the Brig, not wanting to have a special visit with Ally Number Six, and Gaeta used his OPG followed by Pardoning me on an XO. That was nice.

We were handling things, our dials were blue, our fuel overflowing (2 ticks above starting), and we hit the sleeper phase at exactly distance 4 (something I'm not fond of, but it happens).
At that point, my 2 loyalty cards were "PG: President Brigged or lose 1 food" (not a concern) and "Final Five: If someone looks at your card, you are executed" (a mild concern, but not for long).
Tori passed her loyalty card to Gaeta. Not a big deal, or so we thought.

A little while later, the Crisis failed (we tanked it) which says that nobody can look at Loyalty cards for the rest of the game. Fine. That makes me safe from asploding.

Not long afterwards, I made a stupid move.
I was sitting on the FTL button, but I chose to XO Pradmiral Gaeta to get him to push the button. He said he could take care of some things...
...and that he did.
He played the Quorum Card (sorry I am bad with names) on me which says "roll a die, and either gain the admiral title or lose morale", and I became Admiral, and then _his_ second action was to Reveal (and push the jump track down 2 spaces, I think).

Fast forward a little further, and the end of the story involves Centurions.
We had an incredible number of Heavy Raider activations come up in succession.
Near the end, a pair of Centurions were 3 hops away from "Humans Lose".
I drew a crisis with a Heavy activation, Starbuck OPG'd it, and another Heavy activation showed up.
March-march-march.
Then it was Cylon Gaeta's turn, and he activated Heavies. March-march-march.
Then, lo and behold, the Crisis on Tyrol's turn also had a Heavy activation icon, and Cylon Tori's turn was going to be next.
We conceded. :(

So we still haven't actually ever gotten to the Crossroads phase, but the allies indirectly screwed us.
Our few encounters with them weren't that devastating, and most of us didn't even have trauma to speak of.

But poor Starbuck.
Matt was drawing nothing but Negative Trauma, and being the only pilot, had very little time to get on board and shed trauma to the allies.
It all felt a little too random. So we may never try Ionian Nebula again.

Did I also mention that we ran out of raptors? We may have had just 1 left before the Sleeper Phase, or we may have lost all 4 before, it's another hazy memory.
I swear I wasn't drinking, I just have bad retention :)

After the game of Galactica, nobody wanted to take the time to learn the rules of Glen More and have no idea how long that'd take (myself included), so we played a 5-player game of Dominion.
It involved Pirate Ship, which always changes things, but especially with 5 players it was always hitting treasure. Not much for +actions in the supply, the game went relatively slow, and I don't even remember who won (I think it was Matt with 23 points?) The game definitely ended with lots of Provinces left over (and yes I did find the one I thought I lost; sleeved cards are so sticky!) But Dominion is always an interesting game to figure out how to use the 10 cards at your disposal...

PGWJ Update July 13, 2011

Blogs are still different enough from Circles that I'll continue to update this..
By the way, if you want a G+ invitation, leave a comment here or email me.

Anyway, last night, two enthusiastic humans came over ready to play a game of BSG.
Unfortunately, it just ended up being the 3 of us. Me, Shaun, and Sarah.

I don't need to tell you, 3-player BSG is not worth opening the box for.

I didn't sell 3-player Power Grid very well.
And neither of them had played Dominion before, and seemed more excited about that. It's probably the best-balanced-for-3 game in my collection anyway. Or at least in the top 3. (Don't ask me for a list; I made that number up).

We played 2 games.
The first game was the base-game Suggested Layout. Cellar, Militia, Moat, etc.
Not-too-surprisingly, even trying to hold back, I won that game by a significant margin. I specifically did not coach them through it.

The second game was chosen all-random except Alchemy and Black Market.
From memory, these were the cards in no particular order:
Jester
Fortune Teller
Rabble
Contraband
Menagerie
Hunting Party
Moneylender
Witch
Chancellor
Ghost Ship


Very Nasty indeed!
Not much in the way of +cards/buys/actions, and so many attacks.
It should go without saying that the Curse deck was exhausted.
Fortune Teller followed by Jester was a frustrating sequence, guaranteeing the gift of a Curse. And Jester on its own definitely accelerated the emptying of piles.

The game ended with Shaun as the big winner, something like 21-11-7, after 3 piles had been depleted and maybe 3 Provinces had gotten purchased total.
We were definitely very close to at least one person ending with a negative score.

Dominion is still strong, don't be a Kingdom Hater...

Alta Tensão

I'm really starting to like Power Grid.
Over vacation, Talita and I played twice; once with USA and once with Germany.

So I went ahead and spent more of my "gaming fund" on a couple of expansions.

I picked up the "New Power Plants" deck, the Brazil/Spain board, and the China/Korea board. Exponentially increasing the options of how to play.

Talita agreed to try something new out, and we appropriately tried the Brazil board, with the original deck (leaving out the promos).
The difference with the Brazil map is that "biogas" (garbage) is more prevalent; you can't take out any of the garbage plants when taking random ones out for 2 (or 3) players, and the replenishment rate favors garbage especially in Step 3.

In the end, it didn't feel that much different from the base game; not a bad thing, but I think it's one of the milder variations. The China/Korea board definitely seems to challenge the rules more on both sides. Looking forward to trying them at a PGWJ or just a 2 player with T.

Overall, 2-player Power Grid is not bad. The auction phase is bland, and the game usually ends with a money tiebreaker, but it's still fun. I will play 2p PG over the 2p "hacks" of a lot of other games...

PGWJ Thursday Pre-Vacation Edition

What was originally going to be 5 was 3 (the same old story) for the Thursday Play Games With Josh night, before 2 weeks of vacation where my game partners will only be my wife and son (not a bad thing!).

One guest was someone who hasn't made it to "one of these" before, but is an old gaming friend, so it was awesome.

I just recently picked up the newest Dominion expansion, "Cornucopia", and Dominion works great with 3, so that was the first game we played.

Since Tree hadn't played before, but I wanted to try out the new cards, we used the "suggested" layout of 5 cards from Cornucopia and 5 from the base set.
Max got quite an engine going with Tournaments and the earliest Provinces; he ended up with 4 out of the 5 Prize Cards in his deck by the end (and collected a Duchy from an additional successful Tournament). He even managed to get a Horn of Plenty out that was worth more than $8. Yikes.
Suffice it to say, Max won that game, 48 to 41 (me) to 27-ish (a respectable total for a new player).

We debated playing a second game of Dominion, but it "wasn't in the cards" (har har har!!!)

Instead we moved on to the game that's been on my mind most lately: Power Grid.
I'm not incredibly experienced with this game, but I have to say, I think PG is less balanced at 3 players than it is at 2. With 2 players, the auction phase is usually uninteresting, but there is still competition for the lesser resources. With 3, it's too easy for one player to go off and "do his own thing" with garbage or uranium and take a big lead.
In early game, I lagged behind, partly on purpose to get the advantage of "last place". In mid-game, I was the garbage king; the only one collecting garbage, with 2 wind farms as well. I almost thought I had a chance of winning.
Then I made the mistake that cost me the game: In Phase 3, going first, I chose the big #50 to auction off... and I ended up paying $100 for it. That was just too much, which allowed another player (Max again) to purchase enough cities to end the game before I could dig myself out of the hole.
Oh well, live and learn.
I am seriously considering picking up some of the expansions for Grid, though; the alternate power grid deck might help, and the other maps look like they introduce interesting challenges. Also still haven't played with any of the promo cards, so I don't think Grid is ready to go back on the shelf yet. Maybe it will come with us on vacation.

Anyway, that's that for now. I hope to have some more interesting posts back on the blog again soon...

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.

PGWJ mini session report 05/11/2011

We ended up having 3 people for PGWJ, instead of the expected "4 maybe 5", but that's OK.
The benefit to having 3 is that you can play more shorter games.

So,
Kevin arrived, and while we were waiting for Matt, we decided to play Devil Bunny Needs A Ham, which I downloaded for free from cheapass games under their new free-print-and-play model.
DBNAH is a silly waste of time; all of my chefs (Ticket to Ride trains) ended up totally dying (to the Devil Bunny represented by a Reggie Jackson Baseball Clix promo), and Kevin ascended to the top and won.

By then, Matt was there, and we knew we wouldn't be seeing anybody else.

The first 3p game of the night was Race for the Galaxy.
The only times I ever play Race for the Galaxy are with Matt.
It's not my favorite game; I like San Juan, but RftG has a bunch of complexities that I don't grok because I don't play it a lot.
I tend to lose because I don't pick a strategy, or don't draw the cards to support my strategy.. So yeah, I lost hard. Matt won.

Next, we moved on to Ticket to Ride.
Since I have the 1910 expansion, and was too lazy to discuss all the options, we played the "Mega Game".
Just my luck, 3 of my routes got completely blocked out-of-hand.
And trains are used up quicker than you expect.
So Matt won this one too.

Finally, we played 3 games of Dominion.
I've stopped caring enough to write down the kingdom cards every time we play.. But we each did win a game of this, and it wasn't always the person who went first, which is nice to see.

Maybe next week, we'll have more people, but I'm happy to have any at all :)

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.

A visit to New Caprica

Last night, we had 4 players, excited to play BSG again. The plan was New Caprica.
Players were:
Matt - Adama
Kevin - Starbuck
Max - Zarek
Me - Caprica Six

I chose a Cylon Leader for a few reasons, but maybe not the best choice in 4p NC.
My agenda was comically unattainable: Humans Win and all resources at 3 or less.

Long story short, I tried flooding the board with Civvies but the fleshbags were too efficient. Shortly after Sleeper Phase, I realized that there was no hidden Cylon, which sealed my fate; without a check-spiking buddy, my influence on resources was minimal.

The fleet hopped right on and off New Caprica; Zarek compensated for his weakness with XOs aplenty.

Final score: Humans win (obviously), Pop at 7 and everything else at 4, after revealing Personal Goals.
Josh loses.

I'm willing to give New Cap another shot, with more players and probably not choosing a Leader... but this experience, while still fun, didn't really shine.

What Nebula? PGWJ BSG session report!

Finally, a game of BSG with Ionian Nebula!

Last night, at our PGWJ gathering, we had 5 players for BSG. Everyone had played the game before, and so we dug out the Trauma Tokens and Allies and got started with that.

Here are some brief highlights:

Players were:
Matt (Roslin - post-sleeper-phase Cylon)
Me (Chief)
Shaun (Cally - pre-sleeper-phase Cylon)
Jesse (Apollo)
Kevin (Tigh)* (Cain)

Very early on in the game, Admiral Tigh got a chance to check out somebody's loyalty. Wisely, he chose Cally. Pegged her as a Cylon, which, as we all know, means that there's a 50/50 shot of either one of them having a shiny red spinal column.

We were not left in suspense for long, because Cally has a fairly straightforward way of resolving that uncertainty.
On her next turn, she tapped Tigh on the shoulder, and he departed from this world, showing that he had been Human.
Admiral Cain came in to replace Tigh, and soon returned the favor, using her uber-brig ability to flush Cally out of the airlock and into the Resurrection Ship.

That set the tone for the rest of the game.

A lot of location-damaging happened in this game, which led to Pegasus's destruction and the humans' eventual demise, but also it allowed the Cylon players to cycle their Trauma tokens, which was a mechanical (no pun intended) concern from the beginning. No worries at all for them.

As for the rest of the Ally Mechanic, it worked out pretty well.

Two notable moments:
We were running low on fuel, and after encountering Boomer in the Armory, Cain drew Seelix (beneficial effect: +1 fuel). So, seeding Seelix with "positive trauma", Cain was able to pick it up later and help us out.

Notable moment #2:
Pre-sleeper-phase, President Roslin had to place Aaron Doral on the board, seeding him with negative trauma (Damage Galactica), and strongly advising that we do not go visit him.
After the sleeper phase showed Roslin her true Cylon colors, which happened to be the "Reveal and Damage Galactica" card (with Doral's picture on it, of course), she conspired with Doral to blow up Galactica in a really bad way.

The ship was so hurting, the Basestars were firing well, and we were dealing with Centurions at the same time.. we made it to Distance 5 and didn't even have the chance to Blind Jump, before Galactica disintegrated into tiny bits.

Even without seeing the Crossroads Phase happen, I enjoyed the spice and intrigue that the allies added to the game.
I'd love to try it again.
Maybe next time!