1886

I have always wanted to try an 18XX game. However, I have yet to own one. They are quite rare and out of print or printed by limited production shops. I ordered 1886 over a year ago (13 months actually). The company which makes this game is run by a couple of people in their spare time as a labor of love. So very few copies are made per week. And it finally came my turn to print out my game. Which turned out to be quite nicely made.

We went over the rules and dived into game play. We didn’t play out the complete game because this is a long game (4+ hours?). But it was an interesting game. And I definitely want to try it out again.

Princes of the Renaissance

We started out with another game of Princes of the Renaissance. In this game, I went after a strong military at the start. Oddly, no one bought the pope for any of the eras in order to gang up on someone. I kept even in battles won and shares in the strong countries at the end. However, I was able to buy a number of artists who were worth victory points at the end. And this was the thing which won me the game.

Race for the Galaxy

We finished up the night with a couple of games of Race for the Galaxy. Man, this game is becoming over-played…

Glory To Rome

Mike hosed the weekly game night by holding a Lost season finale showing. Since I could only get one other person interested in games, I had to cancel and went to Mike’s instead. He surprised me my calling me early and having a game. They were up for yet another game of Race For The Galaxy. Even though his birthday present was the new Vinci-like game Small World. I definitely wanted to try that out. But they didn’t want to spend the time to read the rules. So I forced them to play Glory To Rome instead. Which is very RFtG like, but it is set in Rome instead of Sci-Fi.

Caylus Magna Carta

We started out light with a game of Caylus Magna Carta. It has been a while since I have played this game. I was the only one to build a blue building and that was more than enough for a win.

Race For The Galaxy

I wanted to move on to another game but this group seems stuck on RFtG. Gah! For the first game, I had the perfect set of cards. I don’t think I have have seen that happen before. My homeworld was Epison Eridani. I came across the Star Nomad Lair immediately giving me +1 for selling blue. The Spice World and Export Duties increased selling blue to +4. The Secluded World and Gem World allowed me to ship blue for victory points. With my income, I was able to play Galactic Federation, Galactic Survey: Seti and New Economy. This more than gave me the win.

The next game was the complete opposite for me! I started with New Sparta. This is quite a simple strategy. Keep growing you military strength and then lay down the two 6-value military bonus cards. However, I never saw any military strength cards. All I did was explore +5 and I could not find a one. Jon (who was on my left) apparently drew them all. And played them. Sigh. There was not much that I could do to save the game but I did tie for last place.

The Scepter of Zavandor

I’ve been wanting to play Outpost for a while now. But we settled on The Scepter of Zavandor. Even though I wasn’t the Druid, I still decided to pursue the Ruby path. I did pretty good at the start. I was the first to get four Sapphires. I then slowly worked my way up the Ruby track and started buying Rubies. My only problem in this game was the artifacts which destroy gems. I bought one Magic Mirror and survived the two others. So far, so good. I knew Shadow Cloaks were coming soon, but I wasn’t able to increase my gem storage in time. I messed up by not buying a Magic Wand and sacrificial Opals. So the three Cloaks ate into my Sapphires. I was able to buy two sentinels: the Salamander and the Raven. And that got me third place. First and Second places were only points ahead of me. And if I were to have bought that wand and Opals, I think I could have won the game easily. Sigh. Still a fun game though…

Race for the Galaxy x 5

Chapel flaked on me. Normally, I don’t mind people not coming to game nights. But when they RSVP and then cancel, that means more than just I suffer. And I could not do a fallback of going to yoga since I didn’t bring my workout clothes and mat with me. Sigh. I guess that from now on I will have to treat a one day ahead reservation as unreliable.

Fortunately, Jon was willing to play a two player game of Race for the Galaxy. We went to Chuy’s and played one game. And then we went back home and played four more. There are a lot of cards in this game. And the possible combinations are intriguing. The best way to scratch that itch is back-to-back games of it.

Princes of the Renaissance

We started with an older Wallace game. After a short rules refresher, we dived into the game. Or, at least tried to. While the rules are simple (they are only a couple of pages long). The initial game play was not. There are a bunch of tiles in this game. And they each have attributes to them. So we were a little perplexed as to what long term strategy to pursue. I started off with a heavy military force. This game is definitely biased towards offense. Eventually, my army had a rating of 13 offense and 7 defense. I also won the Swiss Mercenaries tile which gave me +1 attack, +1 defense and -1 bid on Condottieres. In a three player game, there are four wars. If you win an attack (or win a defense and then win a counter-attack), then you get a victory chit. These chits are summed via triangle points. So, if you win a lot of wars, then, in the end, you will score a lot of victory points. But it is not so one-sided. If the pope is purchased, then one player can side with another. Mike and Jon used this ability once over each of the three eras to stop my aggression. Also, there are treachery tiles that you can purchase which may have abilities to lessen my attack strength or even stop the war.

Victory points are not only gained from wars. Many of the tiles are worth victory points. The city specific tiles are worth victory points based on their prestige (which goes up when wars are won and goes down if they are lost). Most money and most influence will also gain you victory points. So it seems balanced. Although I did win because I had won six wars.

Pillars of the Earth

Next up was a lunch-time length game: Pillars of the Earth. In this game I was lucky to grab Prior Philip in the first round. This gave me an extra victory point whenever I placed master builders in the Priory. Which, of course, I did every round. This alone scored me at least nine victory points. With this advantage, I leapt into first and stayed that way for the entire game.

Le Havre

We started out with Le Havre. Which turned out to be quite different from all of the other games that I have played of it. Certain critical buildings were buried. Buildings like the Bakery, the Smokehouse, and the Brickworks. This meant that more concentrated food production was delayed. Which turned the game rather lean. None of us built steel or Luxury Liners. Mike even managed to take out two loans during the game (which is the first time that I have seen someone take out a loan). I did manage to build a lot of buildings though and easily win the game.

Big Three

We finished up with a short game of Big Three.

Settler’s Cities and Knights

We started out with a game of Cities and Knights. Mike had been wanting to play this. So we accommodated him. I was the third player to start. My first pick was okay and my second pick was not good at all. I had an 11 and a 12 among the numbers that I was sitting on. Which is not a good start. But I was lucky. We rolled both 11 and 12 a number of times! You gotta love the dice sometimes. This was able to place me in the running during the mid-game. However, the dice eventually turned back to their expected distribution. Sigh.

Ed apparently was hating this game. Enough to leave. Fortunately, Marty had arrived and was more than willing to take his place over. In a couple of turns, he had doubled his score. And the game ended a half an hour later with Mike finally claiming enough victory points for a win.

Tichu

We ended with a game of Tichu.

Age of Steam: India

I got lucky to play one of my new Age of Steam maps. This one is about India. There are a couple of changes to the rules (of course). The first is that a die is rolled to simulate monsoon rains. Depending on the roll (0:0, 1-5:1, 6:2), money must be payed for upkeep to your tracks. The killer part is that this happens *before* you collect income. How painful. Especially since I rolled a 6 for 5 times during the game. The second rules change is that no dice are rolled for goods production. Instead, goods come out when unique players connect to the corresponding city.

In this game, I struck off by myself. And was fortunate enough to be left alone. I was also able to secure the Engineer for first the three rounds. This allowed me to get my engine level up which I used to make long deliveries. I jumped out far ahead of the others and stayed that way for the entire game. There was one moment during the game where I was set up to make a couple of 5 long blue deliveries. The turn before Jon took Urbanization. I was worried that he might spot the Urbanization that would ruin these deliveries. But he didn’t. Phew. Then Marty gets first choice of actions selects an action and then takes it back to perform the harmful Urbanization. He was in last place and that Urbanization really didn’t help him. But it was a hurt the leader move. However, it really didn’t hurt me all that much. I was so far out in the lead and I was more worried at that time of finding other deliveries to make. Those were the last of the good deliveries in that area and I needed to branch out.