Stacks of Cards

I spent most of the beginning of the day playing the Adventures of Link on 3DS. Later on, I got my stuff, packed up and biked over to Becky & Carl's for games.
We started with their favorite (and only) worker placement game Stone Age. It was a pretty tight game. Carl won, followed closely by Steve, then me, and Becky was off in the back. Once everyone started showing up, we broke out their new copy of 7 Wonders. I must have gotten and played just the right cards, because I came out with the win, much to Becky's frustration. Science rarely does me wrong.
We took a break to eat and then made a walk through the local cemetery. Carl had a few things to do and the girls were happy to talk so Darrin busted out...

Machi Koro 2-4 players
I got this game as a present for Sarah. It just seemed like a game that was cute enough and interesting enough, but not crazy complicated. She does like it, but Darrin and Liz are powerhouses at this game.

During play, everyone starts with 3 coins, the same 2 buildings, and 4 special buildings that need to be built. There is also an array of other buildings available to buy. On a player's turn, they roll a die. What they roll determines if any players make money. You see, every building has a number or range of numbers listed on top of it. If a player rolls a number that matches a card you own you... might get money. The cards also have a color designation. Blue means you get the money no matter who rolls the die. Green means you only get money of you were the one rolling the die. Red means you get the money from the player who rolled the die. Purple means the roller gets money or property from another player(s). After players receive the money owed, you can buy any one building you can afford. You can buy duplicates to increase payment for that rolled number. You can also buy the special buildings. The special buildings make you no money, but allow you to bend the rules (rolling 2 dice, making more money per card, getting extra turns, and rerolling) Once a player builds all four of their special buildings they win.

I said Darrin tends to dominate and this game was no different. He tends to go with the same strategy, and I did my best to detour it, but I wasn't fast enough and he rolled too well. It was a pretty quick game. Kind of sad really.

Everyone was ready to game again, but all the games we had that allowed for 7 players didn't interest one player or another. We broke off into two groups. The girls played Diamonds and we played...

Dominion 2-8 players
This was my first major buy in the world of tabletop gaming. I saw a few plays online and was sold. I had found a discount through Google Offers for games at Cloud Cap. I got the Big Box which includes the base set and two of the smaller expansions. Not much later, I got two of the larger expansions. This is when my box hit critical mass. I had hodge-podged a system for keeping them organized in the big box. I have had 2 other expansions on my BGG wishlist since as long as I've had a wishlist, but I keep them at the "Don't buy this" level because I wouldn't know how to store the whole collection. I've seen storage boxes, but I wouldn't know where I'd store that box in my place.
It's the standard in deck building games. You all start with a 10 card deck of mostly crappy cards. You draw 5 cards and play them. Play any actions you have (you start with no action cards), then buy a card from the center pool with coins you played and then discard the cards from your hand and any you purchased. The cards you buy can give you more coins, actions, buys, cards, points, and/or other abilities. Of course, you have to wait for them you show up in your hand to use them. You play until 3 piles of cards empty or until the province cards (6 victory points) empties. The most victory points wins. The key to the game is creating a deck that is efficient and effective. You want to be able to grab big points, but points are only good in the end and are dead cards during play. This means you need to not only build a good deck, you also need to know when to start gobbling up points. Since each game plays with 10 "kingdom card" sets and the base game comes with 25, this leads to a lot of replayability.

We used Carl's base set and set up our kingdom cards using a shuffle app on my phone. I was able to tell from the cards that the key to winning was being able to clean my deck out and making a few big buys. Everyone got bogged down by curse cards (-1 VP) and spent most of their money on cheap cards. I started getting rid of the bad cards early and was able to make some of the only VP card purchases. The game ended with 3 piles emptying. I won with 6 VP. Most everyone else have a negative total.

We played another game with 6 players right after. We swapped a few of the piles for some from the Intrigue expansion. I went with a similar strategy, but forgot that with 6 people the curses come even faster. I probably shouldn't have started buying VP cards as early as I did. This clogged up my deck and also gave everyone else the impression that I was the player to beat. I did end with positive points, but Darrin came out on top being the only player to get a province. Sarah was a close 2nd.

Tally: 51/152  Bonus: 13/50