Mordred

Tonight was another 1st week in a month with The Central Texas Boardgames Meetup Group. We started out with a couple of hands of Escalation!. Next up was a Wallace game that I wanted to try out — a reprint of one of his older games called Mordred. It certainly looked interesting. The rules were simple. They even promised that the game would play quickly. And with one of three possible ending conditions, it looked likely. However. And this is a big however. Our game was the complete opposite of quick. It must have dragged on for hours. Not all of it was the game’s fault. Rules explainers were dragged off. People took breaks to get munchies. And the players were far too conservative. But I will give this game another chance…

Cuba

Jon held game day at his house this time. And all of the games that we played came from John’s “box of fluff.” But these weren’t fluffy. So there’s hope for John after all.

First up was Cuba. This time I went for “the blue strategy.” I was second to start and I was worried that someone else would take my building. So my first action was to build the Dam. Jon apparently was going to go for that one as well (I learned this after the game). Instead, he took the Hotel (2 victory point generator). I wasn’t worried that someone would take the Golf Course (convert water into victory points). So I took the Inn. And, on the next turn, I built the Golf Course. On the third turn, both the Duty Act and the Subsidy Act were the water ones. Clearly, I needed to win that vote. But I made the mistake of not spending all of my money (I decided to keep a couple of bucks). Jon did the team thing and stopped me from winning the vote. This took me out of a first place win. Instead, I ended up second.

I don’t know about the water (or blue) strategy. I did not produce that many goods. And, consequently, I didn’t ship that many (or fulfill the Duty Act) either. The four water resources and one victory point gave me a constant increase of 5 victory points a turn. Which is not bad. But the rum or cigar cafes will allow you to get a maximum of 6 victory points per turn. While the red, white, or blue cube converters only allow a maximum of 4.

Gipsy King

Next up was Gipsy King. Which I missed playing at BGG.con. This is a lighter but still meaty game. And its a perfect one for lunch. I view it as a purely abstract game. In fact, I don’t even know what the “theme” is. I suspect that it may involve Gypsies. But I could be wrong.

This is a block placement game where you are trying to get long chains of your blocks. The longer the better. And, secondarily, you also try and get majority control of lakes with fishes. If you control a lake, you get a number of victory points that equal the amount of fishes in it (small numbers). Ties are good. Everyone shares the points equally. The real big amounts of victory points come from the length of your chain. You score triangle points based on the length.

There are two round in the game. You start surrounding lake number one and continue until the highest lake is surrounded. On the next round, you start at the highest number and move down to one. You can either place one of your blocks on a hex surround the lake in question. Or, you can pass and enter the queue for placement at the next lake. This is sometimes a good thing indeed, as you are trying to connect your chains. And you will skip areas to concentrate on others.

Tichu

We ended the night with a game of Tichu…

…scored on a cute pad of paper!