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.

Is this thing on?

Blogger has been weirdly broken for several days; today it actually let me log in.
Maybe I'll have a chance to post a summary of last week's gamery before this week's potential gaming...

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.

If you say it enough times, it becomes true

Yeah, it hasn't been very long since this post:
http://blog.tornsignpost.com/2011/02/continued.html

And I'm saying it again, but more strongly now.
I've already posted to the PGWJ list, but I figure it's just as safe to post to the blog.
What I'm trying to avoid is causing panic and alarm by posting to our local vtes mailing list.

You want to buy a whole 25000-30000-ish card VTES collection that spans the whole history of the game? Willing to pay shipping (or preferably pick it up)?

Make me an offer or direct any questions about it to me (by private email, please).