Liar’s Dice

Well, we started out the night by waiting for everyone to show up. So we brought out this light filler game. I went for the law of averages by calling whenever the target was above and pushing up whenever it was below. This got me third place in the game. One interesting roll for me was the two stars roll. That got one of Mike’s dice!

RailRoad Dice Germany

Finally! I got to play a game that I have had on the table for a while now. I am just not forcefull enough to make other people play a game that I want to play.

There was some good news and some bad news. The good news was the at least there was English rules for the game. The bad news was that English was obviously a second language for the writer. Which meant that there were a number of questions that we had during the game. And I hate people trying to break a game by asking intensive questions (“What happens in this far fetched scenario?” Grr!). So there were no clear answers and we just made up some house rules to get the game going. Another unfortunate thing was that we got a rule wrong (no surprise there) that enhanced a runaway leader problem.

I tried to get Doug and Mike to play the game again. After all, we had just learned the rules and set everything up from the previous game. Sadly, Mike was burnt out and didn’t want to play again. I guess that I will have to wait a couple of months for the next playing…

Feurio!

Well, it doesn’t seem like we will be able to time the games so that both tables end at close to the same time. So Mike suggested that we play Feurio! The game ended in a two way tie for the win for myself and Mike. And Mike invoked my patented read-the-rules-for-the-tie-breaker strategy for the chance of winning the tie-breaker. Unfortunately, Mike won the tie breaker…

That’s Life!

We ended up the night by playing That’s Life. In this game, I only had three fortune tiles. Mike and Doug had collected a lot of the positive and negative tiles. I knew I was in last place currently. So my strategy was to try and collect some high value negative tiles. Unfortunately, I rolled high numbers and could only collect two negative tiles.

Anno 1503 – Aristokraten und Piraten

There was a full house tonight and I had to break out the third table! Fortunately, I was able to convince two others to my one of my Essen purchases which had been languishing in my bookshelf for a while. And boy did it kill my mood! The dice freakin hated me!! No one rolled a five, which was my wild card resource. While Doug’s and Susan’s wild card resource was rolled multiple times. And I could not set up a valuable production. Susan was making a ton of money selling Tobacco and Doug was making a lot of money as well. I could only sell wood and stone for 1 dollar. 1 dollar!!! Gah! I would still play it again. I do not hold the weird results that dice can have too much against this game.

Metro

Well, there was no chance to switch players. So Susan pulled out Metro. A fun game of screwing other people. And it is surprising that she pulled it out, since I had a lot of build up rage after the previous game. So I relieved it by whining about how “I was so in last place”. Well, my Jedi mind trick must have worked because Susan and Doug left me alone a tiny bit and I was able to win the game.

Nicht die Bohne

Most of the people left for the night and we had 5 people left. Jon suggested a card game and I responed with the perfect for 5 game of Mu. However, we had Mike with us and he hates most trick taking card games (and Doug was whining as well). So I drug out Nicht die Bohne. Which is another game of screw your opponent. The problem was that after two hands Doug was in first and I was in second (Mike was in third). And being in the lead is a bad position to be in for this game. So I was picked on severely. And what was worse was that for the last card that was played, Mike was in a king-maker situation. He chose to give the positive points to Doug and the negative to me. Which ended up in Mike winning the game, Doug in 2nd, and myself in third. Sigh…

Sigh. The end of an era. After 8 years of holding weekly gaming sessions and after over 400 game nights, this is the last Russcon session. You see, Russ is selling off all his worldly possessions and moving to Wroclaw, Poland.

I am sure that people will pick up the torch and hold weekly gaming sessions. But it won’t be the same. In a different house, and with no Russ, and with a slightly different group of people, the old chemistry will be gone.

Many people were in attendance and the mood was festive. I played one game of Tichu and then talked to people. Russ finally showed up from Polish class and there was much rejoicing. And then I drove off into the night…

Pig Pile

Another trip up North, the far far North. We started the supposedly meaty game day with Pig Pile. A light, fluffy and chaotic game. In this game, the Pig God hated me and gave me poor cards. But it still remains a fun and quick game for me.

Conquest of the Empire

Finally a somewhat meaty game was played! I really tried hard to convince people to play Struggle of Empires. Unfortunately, no one would have anything to do with it. They wanted to play the supposedly lighter version. Sigh. I am beginning to loose faith in this game group. Still, we got to play with plastic army pieces.

I made sure that everyone knew that Mike would be untrustworthy in this game ;). But what was surprising to me was that no one allied in this game for land battles. Naval battles were pretty much a waste of time as well. Another weird thing was that the alliances did not change during the whole game. Except for a tiny bit at the end.

Hopefully, I can find enough interest in a game of Struggle sometime.

Fairy Tale

The first game of the night is usually a light, filler game. And this night was no exception. We haven’t played Fairy Tale in a while, and I am glad we opened it up.

Goa

Our first meaty game was Goa. It had been a while since this game was played last. I played a three player game with Doug and Adam. I probably was under bidding on the tiles as Doug would usually bid one more than my bid. Very annoying ;). Adam went for the route of collecting a lot of expedition cards and won the game.

Tichu

Ahhhh… we were looking for a short game to end the night on. With four people at the table, I quickly suggested Tichu. After all, John was a Tichu newbie and we needed to get another convert to this game. The bad news was that I picked John as my partner, and the good new was that we were not officially recording the score. What was weird was that I almost never was passed the Dog. I think that John started to understand some of the game play and strategy that goes on in Tichu.

Trendy

We started with the typical filler while we waited for more people to show up. And I was the best dressed tonight. One of these days, I will start a long game on time and screw who ever is late!

Euphrat and Tigris

And then we had four. A perfect number for many games. And a hard number to have many times. So I was happy. I suggested E&T and everyone agreed. We had one new player so an explination of the rules was required. I started out, but when someone else started saying how I should talk about this other thing first, I just let that other person finish explaining the rules. Less stress that way.

I just could not get the tiles I wanted. Green was very scarce for me. And when I finally got some, all the spots to place that had many green were well defended. This late into the game I wanted to start an external conflict over green to get caught up. And then Mike started a battle between myself and John over only black which I lost. So then I was hurting on the black score. Sigh. Still a good game.

Mc Multi

And after that brain burner, I suggested Mc Multi. This game suffered from a horrible economy. The consumer market was low for most of the game. This hurt Jon as he tried a different strategy and went for all gas stations on his island and buying gas from the markets to sell into the consumer market. At the end of the game, I needed to roll some good numbers in order to sell of my equipment. Unfortunately I rolled poorly. The scores were rather close. I was pipped by one dollar! And the winner was ahead by 56 dollars! This game could have beed determined by dice rolls.

Manila

We started out the night with five players. Not many games immediately come to mind with that number. Fortunately, we picked a new game to play. And after reading all of the rules and waiting for everyone to shut up and stop interrupting during the rules explination, we started playing. Manila is a game that uses dice to move three ships into harbor. There are three dice roles, during which each player can place one piece to bet on what the final outcome will be. You can bet that a certain number of ships will arrive safely or that a certain number will fail to arrive. You can bet that a cargo will arrive. And there are a couple of different power spots to place your token at. The first is a pilot that can either help or hinder a ship. Another is a pirate that can board a ship or get its bounty. The last is the insurance agent who pays for ships that fail to make it into port.

The other aspect to this game has a Modern Art feel to it. You start the game with two wares. If you win the action to become harbor master, you may buy another ware. And when ships make it into port, their wares increase in price. So you are trying to increase the value of cards that you hold and hurt the other cards.

In this game, I was never harbor master. You save money by not paying for it. But you are at the mercy of who wins and therefore which order you go in. You want to go sooner rather than later. Doug was to my left and he won a number of times. This meant that I went last a number of times. But it was good in that Doug was helping the cargoes that I held. Late in the game, I decided to bet on some extreme long shots. I paid 2 dollars for a 15 dollar reward if none of the boats made it. And luckily they all failed to make it! This happened twice, which I think is the reason why I won the game. Everyone in this game was trying to get two ships into port. Another possible strategy is to place all three as far away as possible and hope that none of them make it in. But noone tried that approach.

Schnappchen Jagd

Two people left for the night. Which left us with three. Jon suggested this trick taking game. I was a little rusty in the strategy but fortunately, everyone was as well. Doug was giving me too many tricks with the junk that I was collecting and not trying to hurt me. So I think that that helped me win the game.

Diamant

While we were waiting for Adam and Mike to show up, we decided to play a quick filler game. I pulled out Diamant. It is a good push your luck game with an element of chicken thrown in. I don’t understand why the Grimms hate this game so much.

Struggle of Empires

So now we had six people. Our options were to split up into two three player games or one six. Medici and Union Pacific were brought up. But fortunately, I remembered that we have not yet played Struggle of Empires. And fortunately, everyone was interested in playing. So we struggled through reading the rules and then started the game. I picked blue which turned out to be France.

The first thing that you do after setting up the board is to detemine the two sides for a war. The game is played over three wars and during each war, you get five turns of two actions apiece. Looking at our starting positions, I deternimed that Mike and Adam were threats to me. So my goal was to get them on my side. And fortunately, that turned out to be the case. I only had to bid three gold to make that happen.

Since Mike was my ally, he asked me for help in defeating John. He told me that he would help me in defeating the Germans during my turn. So I agreed. He rolled badly and caused both him to loose and myself to take a loss of one army unit. I decided to wait on attacking those Germans and going after the Central Europeans. He then decided to attack again. He asked me for help once again. But this time, he made it clear that he was not honoring the previous agreement. Since he wasn’t going to help me out, I knew he wasn’t going to honor this agreement either so I decided not to help him. Three times later on during the game I asked for him to hold up his end of the bargain. And three times he refused! So let it be known from this time forward that Mike is a welcher!

While we were playing, we determined that this game was going to take quite a while to play. So we decided to stop after the first war and call it as a learning game. Too bad. Because after Doug was determined to be the leader, everyone picked on him. And then it was Adam and Mike’s turn. Which left me winning the game!

Fjords

While Adam and I were waiting for people to show up, we started out with this new two player game. It is played in two phases. The first is carcassonne-like where you create the area of the Fjord and place farm houses on it. During the second phase, you claim territory by placing markers on farmland. The player who places more markers will win the round. We only played one round but I was able to win it. I would certinally like to play it again.

Fiese Freunde Fette Feten

Mike and I orded this new Friedemann Friese game from Adam Spielte because there were rumours that Rio Grande Games was going to censor it and tone it down (which is a shame. they were a good company. we are adults here). This game is basically a set collecting game. It seemed like it would be a fun game. But this requires that all of the people get into the mood of role playing during the game. Unfortuately, I was counting on (social gamer) Mike to liven it up but he was quiet and reserved during the game (too bad Dan wasn’t playing it). I would certinally play it again with the right crowd.

Ubongo

For our next game, we play a quick playing puzzle game. Each player has a set of twelve colored tetris like pieces and receives one puzzle card. Then, each player flips the card over and reveals a number of tetris pieces and the shape that they have to arrange the pieces into. The first player that solves the puzzle in the time alloted can then move up to three spaces and then collect the first two gems on the board. The next can move up to two spaces (progressing down to zero). At the end of the game, the person with the most like colored gems wins the game. This was an unexpectedly fun and tense game for me.

Easy Come, Easy Go

To finish up the night we played two games of Easy Come, Easy Go. I am still liking this game as a quick filler game. There is a little bit of thought that is required when you decide which dice to lock (and therefore, which prize to go after).

That’s Life

Well, I hosted a somewhat last minute Labor Day Gaming. I am so out of touch with holidays that I didn’t know that Labor Day was coming up until my manager mentioned it. We always intend that during these day gaming sessions people will play longer, meatier games. Since a couple of people were running late, we started off with a quick and light game. And unfortunately for me, the dice hated me and I got my lowest score ever. Which made me realize that when the dice hate you, this game does not give you that many other choices. Yes, you can hope move the sentinels but other people (who are having better luck) are doing that as well. Fortunately, its a quick game.

Wallenstein

Sadly, this game was the only long and meaty game that I played. And we got off to a rough start. I has been a while (year +) since we played this game last so we slowly read the rules. The translated rules are rather horrible and left many holes/questions. Fortunately, Ed has played the game online and was able to answer our questions. Also, Mike wanders by after we carefully set up the game and seed the cube tower. He picks up the tower and shakes it and asks “What’s this?” Gah!

This is a game that would play better when all of the players are experienced and familiar with the strategy. I was able to get second place, but I was not aggressive enough in the end.

Roborally

Ed brought out Roborally for us to play. And it has been a while since I have played this game online, so I decided to give it a try. And boy, what a chaotic and painfull game it was. If your robot has no damage, then you get nine cards to play which you must quickly figure out which order to place them so that you can move towards a goal. I was dealt a lot of useless cards (almost all turns or all moves). Which meant that it was not until the third turn that I was able to move out of the starting gate. I was able to eventually get close to the third goal, but Susan was able to win the game. So we decided to play again. This time we all got three option cards and was able to choose one. I chose double lasers which I thought would be nasty. Ed chose an option that allowed him to lock one of the opponent’s cards. Susan chose remote control which was by far the most dangerous weapon in the game. When you are hit with it, you erase the opponent’s cards and they use yours. Needless to say, Susan was able to hose Ed and take him out of the running for the game. And then she set her sights on me and I was reduced to a smoking cripple. As Susan came close to winning, we decided to forget about going for the goals and try to take her out. But unfortunately, she was able to avoid us and get the last goal.

San Juan

Gaming was winding down and people were leaving. So Jon pulled out a quick game to cap the night off with. While not exactly mind-less, it is a somewhat quick game. I have a feeling that there are only so many strategies that you can take with this game. But, fortunately none of us playing the game were one of those type of people.