Zenix

Since John is only working six days during the month of October, he decided to hold a day gaming session. We started out with this wooden abstract three player game. Your goal is to build the longest path by dropping logs to form a triangle. John managed to tie me for longest path, but my 2nd longest path was bigger than his. Which gave me the win.

Great Wall of China

Our next game was the English version of Chinesische Mauer. The artwork is not as good as the German one. In the middle of the game I was in a two way fight with both John and Gina. Not a good position to be in. But somehow I managed to eek out a win.

Leonardo da Vinci

Ahh, the new meaty game that just came out. Certain members of the cult-of-the-new were lusting after playing this. So I was happy when Susan brought it out. This is a game where you want to be as efficient as possible. And when the game is over, you beat yourself up over the wasted inefficiencies. However, for some reason, the rules and game play did not blow me away in my first playing of it. Who knows what this game is lacking. But I’ll give it another chance.

Blue Moon City

Another playing of this lighter Knizia game. I still haven’t won it or even come close to winning it. But I don’t mind playing it. It is kind of random what cards you draw and what buildings other people go after. So I don’t think there is much long term strategy to this game. Only tactical playing based on what cards you hold now. There is an end-game problem though. During my two playings of it, when it came close to the end of the game, one person set another person up to win the game. I don’t think that they realized it at the time of the playing, or maybe they just didn’t care. But it would be interesting to see how it would play out if everyone knew just what moves other people needed for the win.

Die Weinhändler

To finish off our game day, Susan brought out this older game. The only difference between the German version and the English is the little plastice wine bottles that mark player colors. They didn’t bother to change the name (umlauts anyone), the decimal point (a comma versus a period), or the currency (Euros versus Dollars). In this game, I knew I was hosed from the start. I did not have a good selection of wine bottles that I could use in future auctions and I didn’t have any good matching bottles. The sad thing is that there is not much you can do to alter your situation.

Chinesische Mauer

About time. We finally play this light Knizia game about helping to build the Great Wall of China. There are four groups of victory point chits that people compete for majority presence. On the beginning of your turn, you check for majority in each group of chits. If your card point total is more than everyone else, you can place one the victory point chits onto one of your cards. This adds to your total the negative amount on the chit and it protects the card from being buried by another card. If both victory chits are owned, then players score them, the cards are removed, and new victory chits are revealed. Next, you have two actions. You can either place a group of cards with the same number next to one of the groups. Or you can draw a card. The cards are numbered from 1 to 3 and have special powers. For example, there is the Nobleman which changes every other card to be valued 1. The Dragon can lay over a card and remove it from the game.

All in all, it is a light, simple, and quick game to play — a nice filler to start out a gaming session.

Vinci

John brought this game out on the table. Another game that we rarely play. Especially with a decent version that is playable on the web. Only Jon and myself had played this game before, so a rules explination was in order. Once we started playing, Jon and myself jumped out into the lead. But it was clear that Jon had the better civilizations. Jon’s declining civilizations were scoring him a lot of points. And everyone left them alone. This, of course, gave him the win.

Vinci can be mean sometimes. Here, Mike hoses John by declaring a truce with him and then surrounding him.

Mu

To finish off the night, we played two hands of Mu. On the first hand, we were able to set Adam’s two bid. For the next hand, bidding was fierce. Jon went for a bid of seven. Late into the bidding war, I showed two nines. This was part of the reason why Jon thought he could up it to seven. And we made it by capturing 48 triangles (Jon could have bid it up to 9!). This catapulted me into first and Jon into second.