It has been a long while since a sans-Russcon has been held. But with Russ and Anna here in the States, it seemed like a good time to hold it! Especially when it is at William’s and J.P.’s house.

Army of Frogs

A side benefit of Russ coming was that he bought some Essen games with him (Army of Frogs and King of Siam). As I was reading the rules, Anna sat down and started a game with me. Russ and J.P. joined in as well. The rules are rather simple. If you can move your own frog, you must. You place one of the two frogs that you drew from the bag (and draw back up to two again). If you can get it so that all of your frogs on the board are touching each other and there are at least seven of them, then you will win. When you move your piece, it jumps in a straight line over other pieces. You cannot break of the group of frogs. There is one also niggly rule where you cannot make a “string” (a line of three frogs out from the group). You can make as many jumps as you like as long as you do not end up in the same spot. And when you place one of the two pieces, you can place another person’s piece anywhere and your own piece where it not not touching one of your own pieces.

Tichu

One thing that I don’t like about the Russcon crowd is that they only play Tichu until 600 points. Sesh, it is possible to score a 600 point delta in one hand! And another difference is that Jeff was confused about the wish. Even though I pointed out repeatedly that the wish was in effect. I had played a straight and wished for the Ace (given that Jeff had called Grand Tichu). Everyone passed, so I led a low pair. After it went around with no one playing a pair of aces, I wondered if perhaps people had forgotten. And the was indeed the case. Jeff argued that the Mahjong should be kept on the table if the wish hadn’t been fulfilled. I guess that I am just used to people constantly reminding of the unfulfilled status…

Kaker Laken Poker

Wendy brought her gift from Russ to the table. It seemed like a party game so I was wary of playing it. But the only other table was currently just starting a game of Cosmic Encounters so I had no choice but to join it. This is a game about bluffing. You are dealt a hand of cards out of a deck that contains eight different suits of insects (cockroaches, stink bugs, flys, spiders, scorpions), amphibians (toads), and mammals (bats, rats). On your turn, you choose a card from your hand and give it face down to someone. You claim what the card is. That person can either claim that you are correct, that you are lying, or look at it and give it to someone else (calling it the same card or a different type). If they guess correctly (either true or false) then you place the card face up in front of yourself. Otherwise, they place the card face up in front of them. This continues until someone cannot give a card (they lose) or someone has four of the same cards face up (they lose). Everyone else wins.

Fittingly enough, Russ claimed that this game plays much faster with other groups. But our group was rather slow in all aspects of the game.

Uptown

Tonight was the one year anniversary of First Friday Gamers. A big congratulation should go out to John for putting in a lot of effort to keep this group active.

We started out with a new Funagain game called Uptown. The name and theme are clearly pasted on. They should have just called it Sudoku. Because that is exactly how it plays. You have 27 tiles (9 for the nine rows, 9 for the nine columns, and 9 for the nine blocks (3×3 section)) plus one extra wildcard. You start with a hand-size of 5 tiles. On your turn, you place a tile and then draw back up to five. You can place the column tile anywhere in the column, the row tile anywhere in the row, the block tile anywhere in the block, and the wildcard anywhere on the board. You are allowed to place your tile over someone else’s. But only if this does not split that other person’s group into two groups. This continues until you cannot draw another tile. Your score will be the number of contiguous groups of your tiles.

I was doing alright in this game. I had two sections that I was trying to join up. But I could not join it with one of the three tiles that would connect! Argh!! Stupid randomness. And then I noticed that Ed was going to connect up his two groups right through the middle of mine. So I had to play my wildcard to stop Ed. Later on I was able to finally join up my two sections and make them safe.

Caylus Magna Carta

Next up was a game that I have been wanting to play for a while now. When Caylus came out, it was a huge hit. So it was no surprise that a follow up game was created. This game is the card game version of Caylus. And it does a great job of matching the theme and mechanics of Caylus. I am certainly going to buy a copy for myself and play it again in the future.

Monopoly Express

Oooh! Next up was a new dice fest game that Susan had alerted me about in her blog. I like me some cool dice games. This one does a good job of keeping within the Monopoly theme. It is a light game where you are trying to push your luck. You want to roll dice to match properties. When you get a set of dice to fill in the property, you will get to score it when you quit. However, if you roll three policemen dice, then your turn is over. The first person to 15,000 points wins the game.

There are houses and hotels in this game, but they really don’t matter much in this game. They only score you extra points and do not cost the other players anything.

Enemy Chocolatier

John brought a new (at least to me) Cheap Ass game called Enemy Chocolatier. Marty had said that he liked it earlier, so I was willing to give it a shot. The components and packaging are up to the Cheap Ass standards. And the game play is simple. You are trying to either get 19 houses that match your secret recipe card colors. Or you are trying to score 20 victory points. You start off with an income of two dollars a turn. And houses cost from 1 to 6 dollars. You can buy up to two houses a turn. And if you cannot afford to buy a house, you can skip the turn and take one rain check token (which allows you to buy an extra house). Houses are grouped into neighborhoods of three to seven houses. If you own every house in a neighborhood, then you receive its benefits (which could include getting more income per turn, scoring victory points per turn, or special powers).

It seemed that the game was getting close to an ending. Doug was scoring many victory points per turn and he was two turns away from winning. However on the next turn, Mike surprised me by completing his nineteenth house for his secret recipe.

Big Kini

This was a game that would could have played way back in January. Jon had ordered it on our last Adam-Spielt order. But it never made its way off of the self. And then, a couple of months ago, John started to bring it in his cart of fluff. Well, today, we finally played it.

I was randomly chosen as start player. And boy was I screwed. The last player gets to pick their starting island which continues around until it gets to me. I was left with an island that has a starting capital of 1 dollar. Which cripples you. I was forced to get money as my first action. Jon, who went next, was able to buy cards. And cards are really, really powerful in this game. Because they allow you to perform additional actions on other people’s turns. The other action that you want to do in this game is to explore. But that costs 7 dollars. And I was too cash limited in this game to ever explore.

There were definitely too many players in this game. Having two of them Grimm really drug down the game. The slow pace was even getting to Chapel…

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

With three players present (and one of them being MWChapel), Through the Ages was nominated. I started off with Homer again. I really wanted to try a military strategy this time. And I started off good with Homer, two Warriors, and a Fighting Band. This allowed me to stay in the lead militarily. Which gave me the bonus when Uncertain Borders and Raiders showed up. When the first era showed up, Mike was able to take Michelangelo with a Theater. This allowed him to build two theaters and generate a lot of victory points. I was happy when I drew some aggression cards. I played Plunder against him to knock out some ore and food. On the next turn, I played Raid on him to destroy both theaters. This knocked him back down for a while. He learned his lesson real well and built up his military on the next turns.

I made one mistake in this game and it cost me the game. For some reason, Elvis Presley slipped under my radar. And when I noticed him, it was too late for me to pick it up. Sadly, there were no other point generator leaders for me to get. Doug noticed that the game was ending soon as well and picked up Elvis. This allowed him to win the game. But it was by a small margin. Less than ten points…

Tichu

Jon continues to work up until the starting time. What a work-a-holic. So, we started a Tichu game. Initially, John was displeased for being placed on Chapel’s team. He then made us draw for partners. It was poetic justice when the cards determined that he remain with Mike.

On the first hand, John calls Tichu and was set by me. The next hand, John again calls Tichu and leads a length nine straight. This time, I over-Tichu and play an Ace-high straight. Given my three Aces and Dragon, I had an easy time of stopping John (surprisingly enough, Chapel knew I had those cards). But I don’t blame him for calling Tichu with a long straight.

For the next three hands, Doug had a natural bomb. On one, he helped me go out on my Tichu and on the remaining two, he made his Tichus.

With such a commanding lead at this point, you would think that the game would coast to the finish. But the other team came back a little bit. Mike a couple of Tichus (with Jon helping on one). However, I was able to deal the death-blow when I made my Tichu with points to spare.

McMulti

Next up was Mc Multi. I was happy when someone suggested it. It had been a while since it was last on this table. I started off spending all of my money but $13 on a refinery, a gas station, and a bunch of oil rigs. I hoped to get lucky and strike oil first. Doug saved some money to possibly switch strategies after the first couple of turns played out. Jon was on the sell gas route with no oil rigs.

When play got back to me, no one had struck oil. So i thought I had another chance at a lucky strike. But the opposite happened when I caused both a change in economics and a news event. A $50 tax on refineries came up and I had to sell almost everything to pay it off. Sigh. I probably could have recovered from that, but the dice were against me in this game. I almost never was able to sell gas on the open market while others could. And when I was finally able to sell, the price was so low that it was not worth it. So I just coasted out the game and worked on the computer. I ended the game in last place.

Double or Nothing

It must be an episode of the Twilight Zone. Because I played the same games in the same order. Weird, huh? Double or nothing did give me double the same feeling as yesterday.

Khronos

Another game of Khronos was played because we wanted to see if this game is worth it or not. Plus, the rules were fresh on our minds. For both games, we played with the variant of putting three face up cards to choose from. This is a small step in the direction of being able to choose your strategy effectively. But this game really needs a bigger hand size! In the last game, the three face up cards quickly filled up with one color and stagnated. But in this game, I noticed that different people were going for different colors. So there were cycles in what was available. I was lucky that Tim was going after purple (which I was not). Tim would grab the purple cards and replace them with orange. Which I then grabbed and put back purple. This helps if the person before you is going for a different color if you are. But it hurts if the person upstream from you is going for the same color that you want (which was Mike in this game).

I made a bad initial first move by placing a size 1 orange building on one blue and a size 2 orange building on another blue that was next to the first. I had originally planned to join them for my next move. But Jon took advantage of me by placing a size 2 orange building on the sized 1’s domain. Now I cannot join them because the best I can do is tie in strengths. And in this game ties are bad for the initiator. So, I postponed and upgraded the 2 building to a 4.

And a little bit later on, I was also in a battle with Mike. I now have two orange battles to fight (not a good situation to be in). Fortunately, I was able to tie Mike in strength and Mike was unable to attack either of my two groups. But then the pain started!

Now it is Jon’s turn and he is seriously considering joining Mike and my domains of equal strength and choosing the winner. Instead of fighting a battle that helps him elsewhere. He is not in either side of this battle. But he thinks that he has nothing better to do than to cause chaos and hope it maybe clears out the board and that eventually helps him out. So I sit there dreading Jon’s move. Because if he does that, then I am effectively out of the game. And, as if that was not bad enough, Mary is considering the same thing!! She is fighting Tim elsewhere but she is still tempted to resolve Mike’s and my battle.

Ugh! Such a painful part of that game for me. Fortunately, nothing happened and I was able to reduce Mike. Which put him out of the game. But at least the killing stoke was from the opponent and not from Joe Random Person. This variant seems to favor large buildings. And it is hard to get back into the fight when my domain covers most of the board.

At the end of the game, I never moved either of my two travelers. I only scored in the first board (“Age of Might”). But the second scoring netted me an impressive 34 points.

Double or Nothing

We started out the night with a light and easy Knizia game. It is somewhat reminiscent of Cloud 9. But for some reason, the initial impression was that you really didn’t push your luck as much as you did in Cloud 9. But I will not diss the master yet.

Khronos

John brought out his new game (although Chapel said that he played it during the last BGG.CON). Unfortunately, the rules were written in a confusing manor. Both in the overall explanation/rules flow and wordage. For example, “Rule of Dominion”, “Rule of Hierarchy”, and “Temporal Paradox”. But we eventually figured it out.

The first thing that I noticed was the lack of a buffer in this game. You have a hand size of four cards. And you can build at most four cards. You are dependent on what cards you are dealt. But certain cards are better than others. Also, you can only concentrate on two of three boards. So you have to make long term choices.

Building medium and large buildings propagate in time. Which means that they are also placed on the second and third boards. You can take a chance and build in the second board for more victory points. But the trade-off is that the buildings can be destroyed by building in the first board. Which make the orange cards the safest to build.

Also, what is interesting is that Orange buildings score on the first board and purple buildings score on the second board. Since the medium and large buildings mirror across the boards, you see the same layout. One person will be the orange majority in the first board and another person can be the purple majority in the second board.

At first, this game looked like a three-dimensional version of Tigris & Euphrates. But, given the restrictive hand size, given the fact that you have to pay two victory points to re-draw cards, and given the fact that you cannot keep cards for later turns, turns this into a very tactical game rather than a strategic game. And I don’t know if it is a good tactical game.

Age of Steam Italy

Just me and the Grimms tonight. The group seems to be on its last gasp. But at least it is still breathing meaty air. I don’t usually listen to podcasts. But I sat through the The MetaGamer’s podcast which was on Age of Steam. And that put me in the mood…

Supposedly, this map is balanced for three players. But I think we played the game wrong. Doug and I were competing while Jon was left alone. Another clue was that we never used any of the supplementary track tiles which came with the game. So I think the goal was to get as convoluted as possible. And we didn’t deliver as much black goods (giving negative points) either… Perhaps another replay is in order.

Fjords

The mourning for Franz-Benno Delonge continued tonight with this two player game. I like it. It is a combination of Carcassonne and Go. Probably not so much like Go. But after the board has been created, you do need to carefully consider how to expand your territory such that you get more than your opponent. Mike didn’t have a chance.

Manilla

Next up was a betting game some what like craps. Well, like craps in the sense that you are placing pieces that are bets of probabilities. For example, the bet that all three ships make it into port is less likely than the bet that at least one will make it. So the payouts are higher for the riskier bets. And how can you not like the pirate bet where if the ship lands on the 13th spot, then you get a big reward. Which Jon took advantage of twice (and pretty much gave him the game).

Phoenicia

Next up was another three player game of Phoenicia. I tried to go after cloth-making. And once again I hurt myself on a fort purchase during the first turn. Another thing that hurt me was the poor distribution of cards. Besides my first 6, I kept drawing 4s and 5s for money. And the cloth house came out late.

When it did, I did not expect Chapel to overbid on it. It was completely useless to him as he went for advanced mining. That move decided the game right then and there. I was in last place and Jon was in first. Jon was clearly making more money than Mike. But Mike wanted to play it out to the end. Not that it made a difference.

Another quick blow-out. The first hand was the always amusing equal score. On the second hand, my first eight cards contained the Dragon, Phoenix, Ace, and Ace, so I called Grand Tichu. I had no trouble making it and John played an eight bomb to go out second. And that was not the end of the bombs, either. Traci’s Ace bomb made her Tichu call successful. I also had a Jack bomb to help go out second for another one of our one-twos.

Afterwards, John showed us his new cart that he bought for disc golf. It should be able to hold his rather large bag and a cooler for drinks. What disc golf accessories are left for him to buy?