Ed and Susan had their first game day at their new house. I knew I was in for a drive when the directions started with “Take IH-35 North until Oklahoma and then take the first left…”. Its a nice house with 5 acres of land out in Liberty Hill. I don’t know if the commute is worth it. I hate my twenty minute commute from Round Rock.

Around The World in 80 Days

For the first game, we play Around the World in 80 days. I like the game. It is a light and easy game. I would have won but I could not find two ship cards for the last journey! The person to my right kept taking the swap 3 cards action and no ships came out and were left to me when it was my turn. Out of desperation, I spent four gold to draw two more cards (which turned out to be train cards! argh!).

Funkenschlag

For the next game, we had seven people and we split into two games. I played Funkenschlag with Adam which is a risky gamble. He is tough to beat at this game. I limited the board to the difficult area of seas and mountains. Also in the game, we were short of resources. Coal was depleted early and never recovered. Adam was smart in buying the only garbage plant in the game (and taking advantage of the cheap garbage prices). Phase three actually came out half way into the game which is unusual to me. I rarely get to see phase 3 in this game (and it is definately needed). John was a new player and he kept lots of money instead of spending it to make money.

Caribbean

For the next game, I wanted to try out Caribbean. And I found out that it was not such a good game after all. The entire game is a blind guessing game. You place six betting markers each turn and the winner of each ship gets to move it. And if that was not chaotic enough, you can steal treasures from other ships and drop it in your own harbour. Good thing I didn’t buy this game! I won the game easily and I was the only player who used multiple ships to drop treasures to my harbour.

The Gothic Game

For the last game of the night, we played The Gothic Game. This is a fun game where you try to be the last person standing. Susan fell off the wall and into the moat. She was able to avoid drowning and crawl into Dracula’s lair. She was then bitten and turned into a Vampiress. I tried to find a weapon in the Trophy Room but fell into an Iron Maiden. Adam was desperately trying to find some garlic in the Kitchen but was unlucky when Susan glided over him and drank his blood.

Australia

Mike stoped in Dragon’s Lair and bought another new game today. We played as the first game of the night. The goal of the game is to score points, either by surrounding every spot around an area with people or by placing the correct number of people to match the uncovered number. You can also gain point by placing people in the windmill area of the game. Adam figured out how to get lots of points by placing seven of his people in one double scoring area and scoring that area twice. I don’t know if this game is good yet. I will need some more playings to finalize my decision.

Frischfleisch

For the next game, we finally played a game by Friedemann Friese that I had owned for a while now. The theme is to survive over four game turns. You are either lucky and you find food or you must fight and kill your opponents to make food or you die. Its as simple as that. We struggled though the rules translation and started playing the game. Early on, Mike was unlucky. He must of smelled good because everyone picked on him. He definately tasted like chicken. In the last turn, I made a critical error and went from first to fourth. Gah! Still, it was an interesting game and I would not mind playing it again.

Pickomino

Mike decided to have a Roman themed gaming night in order to celebrate the premiere of ABC’s Empire. He bought some Italian wines, cheeses, and grapes. Tim brought pizza (but not from Little Caesars).

The first game that we started out was not Roman themed but it was light and quick. I have noticed that people who start out with an early lead suffer in this game and then eventually loose. Fortunately, the dice did not hate me and I was able to win!

Ave Caesar

Ed suggested this Roman themed game and I jumped at the chance to play. The other table played Rome: Circus Maximus. This is a game of screwing the other players as they race their chariots. If you can time your move correctly and play the right card, you can block everyone else from moving. Or, even worse, force them to take the longer outside track. Unfortunately, I was me who was getting screwed during the game. Sigh… still a fun game.

Clash of the Gladiators

To finish off the night, we played this game. It is another light dice fest where you control gladiators as they fight to the death. My gladiators did rather well. There were times when they couldn’t hit the side of the wall, but one team of three survived until the end. They performed well enough for a second place finish.

Das Zepter von Zavandor

When Peter suggested that we play this game, I joined in. Unfortunately, this was my second playing of this game and it has been a while since I played it last. Also, Peter and Francesca were new to this game, so we took a long time to play this game. Even I felt like I was taking too long to make my moves. I felt like I made mistakes like forgetting about needing to save up to buy Sentinels and lacking a clear strategy.

So I was surprised at the end when I was able to buy my second Sentinel for all of my money (a couple of dollars over the minimum). I was even more surprised when I piped Adam by one point for the win! I thought that I was playing for third place with Adam and Marty in the game. However, I seem to be a Adam-destroyer and have a perfect winning record. I should quit while I am ahead. 😉

Easy Come, Easy Go

While we waited for Adam’s ride home to arrive, we played some quick games of Easy Come, Easy Go. Adam won one and then I won one. During the third game, I needed to stop Adam from winning. So I rolled what would normally take a goal. But Adam didnt have that goal, so I needed to press on and try to take one that he owned. Sadly I failed. Still a light and fun game!

Pickomino

Mike bought two new Knizia games yesterday (before me even!!). And we brought them to Tim’s house to play today. This is my first time playing with Tim’s gaming group. He has a lot of games, more than Ed even, and a lot of non-game toys like a Mame arcade game and a projection home theatre system.

Pickomino is a dice game where you are trying to roll a number from 21-36 where at least one of your dice contains a worm. If you make a number that is showing on a dominoe, then you get to keep it. Otherwise, you must give one of your dominoes up and flip over the highest domino (which acts as a count-down clock). It is a light, fun game with a weird theme (roasted worms on a barbecue?).

Its main weakness is that it is a dice game and dice can roll strangely in the short term. In this game, I must have had twelve turns where I could not roll a worm at all!

Proof!

Tower of Babel

For the second game, we played another new Knizia game, the Tower of Babel. This is an majority area control game with some twists. There are eight wonders of the world that we are building. Each wonder has three spots for the resources that it requires (one of 4 types). On your turn, you either pass or try to build a wonder by picking one of the remaining resource chits. The other players will then select some number of cards to play (1 to the number on the chit) and then reveal simultaneously. You may then pick combinations of players that exactly fufill the resource requirement. Players put the number of tokens on the board that match the cards that they played if they were chosen. If they were not chosen and they played the correct resource cards, then they will instead score points based on the number of cards played.

One twist is that the other players may play a “trade” card as part of the cards. You can only chose one of the players who played a trade card. You will place your own tokens for the number of cards that they played and they will get the chit instead of you getting it.

Only the first and second place players score when the wonder is completed. Others score only three points. Another twist is that ties are bad (you score the next lower ranking). As wonders score, the amounts grow larger. At the end of the game, you score points for two or more similiar chits (from one to twenty points which can be quite large).

It was a good game. But the playing of it was runined for me because everyone spent the entire game kibitzing and group thinking. This hurts me because I am a quiet player and I can’t influence what others do. The other players were vocally offering one person advice that would hurt my position in the game. But what I don’t like is that this advice secretly helps those people. They tell person A to hurt person B out loud but, at the same time, they won’t say that it helps person C, D, and E.

Easy Come Easy Go

Not everyone showed up on time (must work on that), so we started with this light Knizia dice game. It must have been my night for dice tonight since I won both games.

Razzia!

Finally, Ed and Susan showed up from South Oklahoma and we picked Razzia as a short filler game to play until work-a-holic Jon showed up.

Unfortunately, I did not realize that the seating position was critical. Adam was on my right and he kept calling Razzia which nullified my low numbers. And I taught Susan, all to well, the power of calling Razzia rather than drawing another card for someone else to purchase. Sadly, Ed could not find any protection for his boss during this game.

In The Shadow Of The Emperor

For the final game of the night, we played in the Shadow of the Emperor. I wanted to try this game out before buying it.

This game has some unique mechanisms to it. The number of cards that you play determines the sex of the child that you receive. With more blues than pink, you get a 15 year old boy. Otherwise you get a girl which you can either marry off to a single man (turns into a 2 power couple) or sell off to the nunnery. Your control tokens also age during the game and die off when they go past 45 years old. Ed made the mistake of moving a 45 year old couple in to compete in my area which I promptly killed off!

Rette Sich Wer Kann

Since we had six people, we decided to play this game. I started off with a horrible start by pulling a Susan. I am so used to playing one color that I initially voted for the wrong color and killed my guy off. Sigh.

Another problem with the current group of people is collusion. In this game is a husband and wife. The husband and myself were tied in votes and the wife gets to decide. The wife decides to kill me off even though I am in last place and she is competing with her husband. Sigh. And she lost to her husband.

Wildlife

This is another game that we don’t play enough of. Since we had six people, we decided to play Wildlife since the game is good if there is an even an balanced distribution of players.

This game is all about causing scoring on your own turn to get the bonus. I was doing good for the first half of the game but was unable to cause scoring on my turn towards the end of the game. Jon was able to and consequently jumped past me in the score and won the game. Still a good game.

McMulti

Yah! I finally got to play McMulti! A game that I have owned for a while. Adam taught the rules to us since he had played the game last Saturday.

This is a game where you invest in the oil and gas market. You have a 6×6 board where you place Oil drills, Oil pumps, Oil refineries, and Gas Stations. Each side of the board corresponds to one die that you roll. We played a house rule where you rolled 3 and chose 2. After choosing you can activate the components that lay along the row and column of the grid. The component that is on the intersection is doubly activated, or, in the case of the Oil drill, allowed to be turned into a Oil pump. There are four markets in the game two for oil and two for gas; and two for local and two for international. You can buy and sell the oil/gas. If a Gas station is activated, then you can sell in the center market area. When doubles are rolled naturally, then the prices of the components change either up or down and the center market is reset. Play continues until someone accumulates 1000 dollars.

Since this is a dice game, we were subjected to the vagaries of the rolls. In this game, we must of went 30 rolls without rolling doubles. When this happens, the game does not progress much at all. Oh well, another house rule is needed!

Easy Come Easy Go

Because we were subjected to the whims of the dice, we chose to play another dice game twice. Huh? In this game, you at least have some control over your fate. You lock in dice and re-roll the unlocked dice until you make a goal or are unable to roll further.

I was a nice, quick, fun, easy, end to the night!

Ice Cream

While it was summer outside, I was without the summer-time mojo inside. I tried to set up situations where I wouldnt score as good in one round in order to set myself up for the following round. But I was unsuccessful and my body rejected the ice cream.

Igel Argern

During the beginning of the game I thought that I was doing poorly. My poor green hedgehogs were suffering at the bottoms of many piles of other hedgehogs. In the picture, you can see that Marty (purple) and Adam (blue) were vying for an early lead. Marty was caught using drugs when his hedgehog crossed the finish line first.

Then in the middle game, my hedgehogs were able to escape from the pack and move towards the goal. Marty’s hedgehogs kept trying to jump apon my poor hedgehogs but it was not enough to make it clear that I was in position to win. Fortunately, no one was able to stop me and I won!

Seafarers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion

For the last game of the night, Roxana suggested Settlers and I jumped at the chance. Ed heard that were we going to play and he bolted to the other room. After an initial problem with selecting the wrong scenario, we were able to start the game.

Jon was clearly out in first place. I was unable to escape the main island but was lucky enough to draw 3 victory point cards. We were pretty viscous in deciding where to place the robber and Rhonda (a new player) was sitting quietly and avoiding confrontation. Fortunately, Jon was not able to build his last victory point in time and I was able to sneakily claim the win.

Candamir: The First Settlers

Ed received another free Mayfair game to review and I jumped at the chance to try it out. I am glad that I was able to try it before buying it because given the name I would have bought it sight unseen. I like settlers games. They are not perfect because they involve a dice. However, you can overcome the randomness of dice rolls by picking your initial sites and by making advantageous trades during the game.

Unfortunately, even though this game has the settlers name to it, it is not a settlers game! Instead, it is a solo adventure game much like Die Rückkehr der Helden. During the game, you explore the board by turning up movement cards. These cards show where you can move for free, where you can move and find resources, and where you must successfully adventure to move. When you finally make it to your selected spot on the board, you uncover a chit that gives you resources and you teleport back to the start city. When you are in the start city and not adventuring, you can turn in resources for victory points.

And that is pretty much it. The only negative thing that you can do to other people is drink a potion that can reduce everyone’s hit points by one (which is used as the maximum movement. You can spend a turn healing it). We rarely traded in this game. And this game took a long time to play (2:30 with rules explination).

I spent much of the game increasing my statistics instead of getting victory points. It was a race between Ed and Jon winning the game. At least I was 1 victory point behind them when the game ended.

Can’t Stop

To finish out the night, I play this light and quick dice fest. Unfortunately, the dice hated me tonight and I was not able to lock out any column. You can see how poorly green is doing!