Cyanide Capsules Not Included

Carol and the daughters were still having her birthday celebration today. We were going to go to a nice Italian restaurant, but the plans were changed last minute and it was changed to games and pizza at their place. Hurrah-ish! We started with another game of Stone age. Me, Becky, Carl and Darrin. It was pretty close, but Becky just wouldn't let go of her lead. Becky also knows when to leave because she left before we started...

Phase 10 2-6 players

Ugh! Why 10 phases? It would be better as Phase 5 or 6. In this card game you each have a hand of 10 cards. You draw a card then discard a card. You can play cards from your hand when you have completed the goal of the phase you're on (usually runs and "of-a-kind"s).  You can also play cards to continue another player's phase like in rummy. Once a player empties their hand the round ends. Those who finished their phase move to the next phase and those who didn't stay at the same phase. This continues until someone finishes ALL 10 PHASES. It takes forever. What's worse is once we broke the 6 player limit and had an 8 player game going. This took even longer. From my memory, I tend to win this game a lot. I think I'm just very driven to have this game end. Other people like it so I still play it when it pops out.

This was a 7 player game. I remember very little of it. It was a very traumatic experience.  I'm trying to forget as much as I can. I actually ended with a headache, and we didn't even finish the game. I think the highest phase anyone got to was phase 8. With the fewest points, Tom had the victory, but the real winner was Becky for never playing in the first place. Congratulations, Becky.

Tally: 26/151  Bonus: 6/50

Down Below the Depths of the Earth

I started today with a haircut and a trip to the bank. After a shower, I was ready to game. Liz had celebrations to join in so I called Darrin over to pass the time and to join up for a later group activity. When he got to my place we went to the nearby pub to get some eats and I taught him Isle of Trains. He liked it, but he got a bit locked up when he couldn't get the right weight of cards to add to his train. He still seemed to like it. After eating we headed back to my place to really chow down.

Guts of Glory 2-4 players
I forget where I heard about this game first. I got it through the designer's website and had a bit of back and forth through e-mail with the designer since my first delivery got stolen from my doorstep. He was pretty nice about it. He rushed the shipment of a second one and cut his profits to be fair. Good guy.

 

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic future where the mutated survivors engage in a supreme eating contest. The more food you eat, the more glory you get. Condiments can make the chewing easier or harder. If you run out of room in your mouth before you can shallow something, you have to spit it out. Your competitors can choose to put that in their mouth for even more glory. First to 7 glory wins.

The first few times I've played this, it was a little confusing. The timing can be a bit odd with some of the powers the condiments have. This game, everything just seemed to breeze by, no confusion at all. Darrin had the lead for half the game, but he got hampered by latent psychic energy which made him chew one fewer each turn. Had he spit that out rather than all the other things, he may have had a comeback. I was able to leap past him while he was stalled and fed on everything he spat at me. I ate a victory cupcake after the game.

Small World 2-5 players
Darrin had gotten this game a while ago, but had only learned and played it recently so we never played until now. There had been a number of times while I roamed game stores that I eyed this game up and down, but I always put it back with the others. It just seemed like it would be a mess to organize. When Darrin popped it open, the the game came with premolded organizers. Smart.

In this game you each play different races of fantasy creatures. You sprawl your creature tokens across the map trying to cover as much area as possible, and when necessary, the right areas for your race. You have a limited number of tokens and you need to have enough for each area to claim it or conquer it. As each player takes their turn, they will start bumping you out and taking over. Eventually you run out of good moves with your race. You can then put them in decline and start a new race with different powers. At the end of each player's turn, they score points for any areas they conquered and for the areas they control (this includes areas controlled by their previous declined race). After 10 rounds, the most points win.

In the beginning of our game, I took over the East side with skeletons and Darrin moved in on the North with ratmen. We had a little back and forth before we each went into decline. Darrin then started in on the south with goblins. I saw and opportunity to squash him and started paving over his goblins with my newly acquired giants. With little tokens left, Darrin declined and started up with Elves. I again saw another strong move to make and I switched to hobbits. This allowed me to burrow into his elves and essentially make a long wall blocking his elves in. With little time left, Darrin made a push south, but he had to take out some of his own declined race in the process. It was pretty fun. Even though he lost, Darrin pointed out it was his highest score yet.

Gold Mine 2-6 players

Liz and I picked this game up on clearance from Cloud Cap. I'm pretty sure this is the last game I've ever purchased where I knew nothing about the game. It's a tile laying game where you are trying to find enough gold nuggets and get out before your neighbors rob your pockets or scare you with bats. The first few times we played wrong in different ways. Once we got the rules right it turned out to be a pretty decent game. We also tend to yell out in a Strong Bad 20X6 style when issuing a gold or bat challenge. I got some cool bags later on to throw the components into to make setup and clean up faster

This was probably the weirdest most lopsided game ever. When setting up, the tiles forced us to create two separate tunnel systems. So when the game started, we kind of went our own ways. As Darrin mined, he kept striking it rich while I came up dry. Normally, you can try to nab the gold the other player finds if you can beat them there, but because of the initial set up, we were too far apart to do that. He beat me handily.

We had some time before the meet-up, so we took a trip to Red Castle. Darrin had never been. It was pretty hopping in there, but I didn't see anything I was willing to buy yet. Darrin got Blood Bowl: Team Manager.
My iPhone decided to die when we got back, so I had to do some detective work to find where we were headed. We figured things out, headed off, got some burgers at Five Guys, and got ready to plunge deep.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2nd Edition) 2-5 players

After the Wednesday work lunch game time started up again, my coworker invited me to play this game with him. He had just gotten it and wanted to test it out. This is the guy who re-introduced me to games while in Portland. I was happy to join in on the fun. He invited others from an online forum. Most couldn't make the time work. It ended up being me, him, and one other online dude. We had fun and decided to make this a regular thing. This was the second meet up.

It's your basic dungeon crawler. Shooting and slashing your way though baddies controlled by the Overlord player. It's very pretty and the rules aren't crazy weird. I do like that it gives the Overlord a goal rather than "Kill everyone!" I mean, you can still do that, but it's a bit harder. It makes the heroes play more defensively rather than just going for the goal. You have to make moves with a back up plan in mind.

I played as the same mage as last time,Widow Tarha. Darrin went as the warrior dwarf, Grisban the Thirsty. The other two played as a healer and an archer. The intro mission was a push over. I don't think it's possible for the Overlord to win it. We had a choice of where to head after. Somehow we all decided on The Masquerade Ball. That was a bad decision. The Overlord just took over and blocked us the entire way. We looked it up online and found that it's nearly impossible for the heroes to win. Even though we knew it was fruitless, we powered through and hoped to get lucky. We ended up doing better than I thought we would. Next time we get together for this, we will make the Overlord pay.

Tally: 25/150  Bonus: 6/50

Evil Cards and Evil Dice

At lunch, Liz and I went out to eat and played Isle of Trains again. I posted on the forums about the end game and it apparently only ends by the deck if there are no cards in either the draw or discard pile. We had a pretty good game while eating tacos. It's much better with that rule. And what isn't better with tacos?
After work we played another train card game.

Yardmaster Express 2-5 players

This is a tiny little card drafting game that I helped kickstart. You are each building trains. Each player starts with an engine and builds from there. The start player draws as many cards as there are players. After drawing one, he adds one to the end of his train and passes the cards to his left. The new player adds a card to the hand and also adds one to their train. This continues until each player has placed 7 cards (in a 2-player game) on their train. Every card has a left and a right train car. Above each car is a number (between 2 and 4) and a color (yellow, green, red, blue, and possibly purple). When adding a card to the end of your train (on the right side) The color or number at the end of your train must match the left side of the card you lay down. If you have no matches, you can play the back of any card in you hand. The back of every card has two 2 cars and are each grey which is a wild color. Players score for the value of all their trains and the player with the longest series of one color scores a point for every car in that color. There are also caboose cards that can be added for bonus points on varying train characteristics.

We planned to play 2 games (with bonus cabooses), but the cards hated me. In every game, I never had a chance. Liz got all the high point cards and I just saw junk. When we played games where I finally got some good cards, the caboose would give her bonus points for not playing high value cards. These cards had something against me. I think we played 5 or 6 game before I finally won. Sure, I still like it. It's just got some splainin' to do.

Backgammon 2 players
I'm not sure why Liz and I got into Backgammon. I was really introduced to the game by Chuck after he got back from Bulgaria. It's a nice relaxing game, but that was years ago. In my search for a small chess board it also happen that backgammon board was on the inside. Since the board only came with backgammon pieces and not chess pieces I relearned backgammon. I swapped out the pieces and the dice eventually, since the components that came with the board were crappy and I wanted the dice to match the tokens. We have yet to use the doubling die since we never really play with the intent on doing a series of games. Of course, we usually play at least two.

Liz wanted to play this after. She says she never wins, but that's not true. She claims the dice hate her. That might be true. I nearly gammoned her in the first game, so we switched colors. It was really close. She won with me having a pip count of 6. I may never get her to let me play as black again.

Tally: 23/150  Bonus: 4/50

Working with a Blind Architect

Every other Wednesday at work, we play games at lunch. I almost always eat lunch while working, then nap at lunch, but I gladly make an exception for games. The number of people that show up are variable: this makes picking games to bring tough for me. Even if I have the perfect game, we might be playing another person's game. Today, it was me and two others and I was the only one who brought anything. I felt it was the perfect setting for...

Blueprints 2-4 players
This game wins me over three-fold: It's small, it has lots of pretty dice, and is pretty open-ended in the scoring. You are all constructing buildings using different materials: steel, glass, wood, and recycled materials (represented by different color dice). Each player has their own blueprint behind a divider that they can choose to follow or not. Everyone goes around taking dice from the pool and adding it to their building. You can only stack a die on top of another if the value is equal to or greater than the one below it. After everyone has taken 6 dice, all buildings are revealed and are scored based on the materials and if the blueprint was followed. Gold, silver and bronze medals are handed out. Bonus points are also give to the people who meet certain conditions: 5 dice of the same color, 4 dice of the same number, one die of each number, or a building that is stacked 5 dice high. After 3 rounds of this, the most points wins.

Neither of them had heard of it, let alone played it. I started out pretty weak, but was never too far behind. That is, until the last round. Adam got nearly all the bonus prizes. Those dice must love him. They both really enjoyed the game. Had I remembered and had there not been a meeting in the room right after, I would have taken a picture of us playing it.

After work I went home, exercised, made dinner and set up...

Isle of Trains 2-4 players

I ordered this game online just before starting this blog. The art looked lovely and the gameplay seemed interesting. I would have gotten it sooner, but they sent me another customers order. I wonder if they sent mine to OH. I e-mailed the company and they mailed out another copy and told me to keep the wrong game too. I'd keep it, but it's an expansion to a game I never intend to play (Sentinels of the Multiverse: Shattered Timelines).

In this game you play cards to add to your train, load cars, build buildings, and make deliveries. All
the cards have multiple uses that can be used for each action. The neat aspect of the game is you can get bonus actions or cards by loading other people's trains. You get nothing special for loading your own. Once the deck runs out, you add up points from your train, buildings, extra load, and deliveries.
We played this twice. Liz won the first and I won the second. The first game seemed too short, so on the second go we went through the deck twice. It's good, but it seems like it should last at least 2 decks worth. I feel like maybe I'm not taking the directions literally enough. I'll make a post in the forums tomorrow to see what's what.

Pie Factory 2-4 players

I also got this game with Isle of Trains. How could I pass up a game about pie? I love pie. In fact, I made sure to have pie when playing this game. Mmmmm, pie!
In the game you build pies by playing crust, filling, and topping cards. The more you add, the more it's worth. Some of the cards include bonus categories that will score if you have the most of them at the end. It's pretty easy. Easy as... pie?

This seemed to go just right. I had more of a strategy to get bonuses and Liz went for lots of pies. I won by about 2 points. I liked it and not just because I got to think about pies the whole time. The one problem I found was that we were zooming through the game and I was so busy thinking about the best strategy that I would often lose track of where we were in the round. I have a feeling that more players would help with that, but it got a bit annoying in this game.


Tally: 21/150  Bonus: 4/50

88 mph?

Our last day with Saba and also the last day of our weekend. Liz knew what I wanted to play...

Terra Mystica 2-5 players
This is my favorite game. No question number one. It's a bit of a brain burner and takes a little time to play so it doesn't hit the table anywhere near as often as I'd like. I had heard about the game through Shut Up & Sit Down, but wasn't really sold. They seemed to really love the massive amounts of wood bits it contained. I let it fall in the background. Later, as I was looking for interesting board game play through videos, I happened upon the game again in a walkthrough video made by Michael Wißner. I was mystified. I needed the game, but so did everyone else and they figured it out a few months before I did. The first print run had sold out and the second printing was planned for release some months later. I kept constant watch on the forums and online retailers to make a preorder. It took a number of months but the day came when it arrived. I had planned on playing it on our regular Saturday game night, but in needed practice explaining the rules. I also knew it would help if another person could answer questions during the game. I forced/had Liz do a 2-player game with me. It went pretty smoothly even if Liz was mostly overwhelmed. It was the heaviest game (both literally and figuratively) we had ever played at the time. I was not disappointed in the slightest. The second game with 4-players was even better.

It's an asymmetrical area-control/resource management game. You each play different races with their own home terrain and abilities and benefits. At the start of a round you earn income based on what you've built on the board. Everybody takes turns terraforming the land, building, getting workers, getting money, and researching the cults. Once you have no actions left to take or feel like you need to stop and keep what resources you have you can pass for the round. Once everyone passes, the round ends and prizes are awarded. After 6 rounds the game ends and game bonus point are awarded for area-control and research. This a massive simplification of the game. I didn't even mention the power bowls, neighbor bonuses, favor tokens, town bonuses, or power actions. It's a very complex game to learn, but after a play you get how it all weaves together.

I've been dying to play this game again for a while. I got the expansion about 2 months ago and it may have been about a year since I had played it last. Liz blames it on all the other games. She's right. We each played with the new races. I played the Yetis and Liz the Acolytes. Yetis get power actions cheaper and Acolytes terraform using cult bonuses. From the start neither of us had built next to one another. This meant gaining power was difficult. Since it was a two-player game it made getting power extra hard. By the 2nd round Liz began to find her groove with her race. I found mine in the 3rd round, but didn't actually get to act on it until the 4th round. I had a strong lead in the beginning, but Liz was creeping up on the the entire time. I ended up winning, by about 10 points, which is pretty close. I can't wait for more players. I need my fix.

Fluxx 2-6 players

One of the first few games I added to my collection was Fluxx. It was a neat little game that I felt Liz might enjoy. It's the game Liz thinks of when she remembers us getting into gaming. It's a mad cap card game where you delude yourself in to thinking you have a strategy going. The game is aptly named because everything is in flux, and I mean everything. In the beginning of the game each player starts with 3 cards. The first player to draw a card starts. The basic rules state that on your turn you draw one card then play one card. The cards you play do one of five things: Get added to your collection, "curse" your collection, change a rule, cause an action, or change the goal. The game ends when someone meets the criteria of the current goal. SO the goal may be to have the cookie card and milk card in your collection. Keep in mind that everything is in flux so the goal may change, the number of cards you're allowed in your collection could get limited, or a player could steal one of the cards in your collection. This is why most hardcore gamers hate this game. You have little to no control over what happens and a lot can happen. I probably should hate this game myself, but I like it. There's just something about it that I find endearing.

Once starting this game, we realized how long it had been since we had played this version. We barely remembered the cards and goals that would pop up. The first game took a little bit of time, but I was able to finagle a win. The next two were very quick. Liz was cutthroat, or at least as much as you can be in this game.

Ascension: Apprentice Edition 2 players

I got this game as a birthday present. I had Star Realms on my list, but that was sold out due to high demand. The shop owner had suggested this as a replacement. It's very similar. It's a deck building game where you earn points by getting high value cards and killing monsters that pop out of the deck. The box for the Apprentice Edition is crap so I made a nice box to hold everything. I regret not printing the name on the sides of the cover

We played in a nearby bar after taking Saba out for catch. Liz had more of an attack oriented strategy and I had more of a buying everything strategy. Liz had the upper hand most of the game, but my deck steadily overtook her, and I got a lead right when I needed it.

Tally: 18/148  Bonus: 4/50

Getting It Over With

More Saba time today. We brought him over to Liz's parents later in the day. Once there she got to roam around while we played games. First on the docket?

No Thanks! 3-5 players
I've never had anyone say "no thanks" to No Thanks! Well, maybe they chose a different game, but they would have played it if I didn't have such a plethora of options. It's pretty luck driven, but it isn't always. If it was, I'd hate this game. But you have a choice in the game, and depending how risky you play it can either make it an easy choice or a hard choice.

Each player starts with 11 chips that they keep secretly in their hand. A deck of 33 cards (3-35) is shuffled and 9 random cards are removed from play and put back in the box never to be heard from again. The top card of the deck is flipped and the player has a choice, take the card or pass it. If they take it, they add it to their collection of cards (open so people know what everyone has). They then flip the next card and determine if they want that one. If they pass, they place one of their chips on the card and the next player has the same option. If you don't have any chips left, you take the card. Eventually someone will take the card, but they also get to add all the chips on top to their hand. In the end you add up the value of the cards in your collection and subtract the number of chips you have and the lowest score wins. There is one thing I left out. You don't count the points if the cards are later in a consecutive series. This means if you have cards 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 you only score 20 since the other cards are consecutive.
This makes the game interesting. It means you could take a high card and still win if all your other cards fit the series. But remember that 9 cards have been removed. You might never see that 28. Of course, if it does show up, maybe you don't take it right away. Maybe you let it go around the table once to get some extra chips. Maybe you let it go around twice. I mean no one wants to add 28 points to there... oh, crap someone took it.

We played two games of this. Carl won the first. I might have had a chance, but Carol kept taking all the cards near the end. This meant Carl didn't pick up any other points. If only she would have let that 35 go around once more. Sarah subbed in for Carol in the next go. I happened to get all the right cards and finished with a score of 9. They didn't stand a chance.

We move on to the new game Bohnanza after that, It took a while to get the rules clear, but it sped up fast. I was doing well, but Sarah had way more deals going and she took the crown.
After a lovely dinner we moved on to Carol's favorite card game and my least.

Golf 2-8 players
There are a number of variants to this game, so this might not sound like your golf, but ours goes like this. Two decks are shuffled together. Everyone starts with 6 cards in front of them (3 rows and 2 columns). The top two cards are face up, the others face down. On you turn, you can take the face up card in the discard pile or the face down card in the draw pile. After you pick, you can swap the card with any card in your array or discard it. If you swap with a face down card in your array, you may not swap with the top two cards for the rest of the hole (round). Once someone has all face up cards and calls Golf, every other person gets one last turn and then every one flips their cards. Each card is the value on the card with the given exceptions: A = 1, 2 = -2, J = Q = 10, K = 0, Jokers = "Wild". The other part is that if two cards in a row match then the total value of the row is 0. After 9 holes (rounds) the lowest cumulative score wins.

I hate this game so much. You have very little thinking to do. Either you get good cards or you don't. Everything is pretty random. There are a few things you can do to maximize your chances, but even then the cards just might keep coming up wrong for you and right for everyone else. This was the first time I won the game, and I still don't care for it. I will say it was the most fun I've had while playing it, but it was two other reasons other than the gameplay. 1) I was also busy trying to get Carol's iPhone to work (It's alive, but it has amnesia). B) We had an interesting debate in the middle of the game about the meaning of "Wild". I took it to mean that it can act as any card you want. Sarah took it to mean that it matched the card across from it in the row. In most cases, this is one in the same, except one: if you have a 2 and a Joker. For me you can have the Joker be a K and you score it as -2. For Sarah, the Joker acts as a 2 and this would score as 0 since they match. Liz tried to look up an official ruling, but got lost in the variants. I decided to put it to a vote. 4-1 in favor of Sarah's system. Whatev's. On to a better game.

The Hare and the Tortosie 2-5 players

This is the third in a series called Tale & Game. I've looked into the previous two, but they seem more suited for kids. The recent fourth game looks like it could be good, but not as good as this one. I saw the playthrough on Gamenight! and was sold. The box, like all in the series, looks like a book and actually opens like one too. I made a new and better insert.

This is obviously based off of the old story of the tortoise and the hare, except in this game there are more animals in the race and...SPOILERS...the tortoise might not win. There is a race between the hare, tortoise, wolf, fox, and lamb. Each player is randomly and secretly given one of five cards that represents each runner. You want your runner to win the race or at least place. Everyone is then given a hand of 6 cards from the deck. Again the cards have the runners on them, but there are multiples of each. From the starting hand, you pick a second runner to bet on. You can double down if you want, or diversify. Once everyone is back to 6 cards, the race begins. Each player goes around and plays cards from their hand. After 8 cards get played or 4 cards of the same runner are played the round ends and the runners move based on what cards got played. Each runner moves a little differently, the rabbit move 2 or none, the tortoise always moves at least 1, the wolf never moves more than 3, the fox moves equal to the number of fox cards, and the lamb moves one more than the number of lamb cards but will stop at the river spaces. Only the first three runners to cross the line score: 1st = 5pts, 2nd = 3 pts, 3rd = 2 pts. We usually play at least 3 games to even things out and make it interesting. The movement rules and what cards are allowed to be played in a round can be a little confusing at first, but after about 3 rounds everyone seems to catch on.
This game might be a perfect game. Everyone I've played it with loves it. I often gets sighs of disappointment when I don't bring it to casual gatherings. You can even play it with kids using the simplified rules that come included. I haven't ever played it that way, but I like knowing it's flexible.

We finished up the night with this. It was all over the place. As soon as we thought an animal was out of the race, they'd jump ahead in the next two rounds. As soon as you thought you knew who people were betting on, it turned out they just had no good cards to play. It was anyone's game and I'm surprised I pulled off the win. Some how the fox just crossed the line after 4 fox cards got burned in the first two rounds due to wolf howls. Super fun.

All in all, an pretty casual night.

Tally: 15/148  Bonus: 4/50

Friday Fun Time

Last night while working karaoke, I was headed to the bar to refill my drink and I noticed Cody reading an instruction manual. I didn't take any more notice than that and started filling my glass. Cody said, "Hey! I got a new game." I gleefully said, "Really!" and quickly swiveled my head. I was immediately disappointed at the game: Jersey Shore Trivia Game. I don't really know what I expected, especially at a bar.
This weekend is nice because we get to spend all weekend with Saba, our friends' dog. I even took today off work to get extra time. When we weren't petting her or taking her on walks we were playing games. We decided on Boke Bowl for lunch, but that meant leaving Saba behind. Poor Saba. We got chicken buns and played...

Qwirkle 2-4 players
This game seemed like the perfect compromise. Liz likes scrabble, and I hate words. Okay, maybe I don't hate words, but I don't know anywhere near as many as she does. Qwirkle is Scrabble with colored symbols instead of letters. So there's no need to know how to spell anything or if a word is even legal. There isn't even a board. You place tiles vertically or horizontally. The tiles you add must either have all the same color with no symbol repeated, or all the same symbol with no color repeated. You score a point for every tile in the row and column you added to. You score a bonus 6 points if you finish a set of 6 (there are only 6 symbols and 6 colors). It's called a qwirkle. All the rules for placement are exactly the same as scrabble, but since there are no word restrictions it tends to clump a lot more.

Most of the game is spent holding on to 1 or 2 pieces waiting to get the right piece or waiting for the other players to place the right one in order for you to finish a qwirkle. Near the end you'll be counting blue clover leaves to make sure no one will be able to qwirkle off of your placements. It's really good and better with 3 or more players. Of course, if one of the players is just giving all the qwirkles to the next player it can be seriously frustrating. I have the travel edition so there isn't much room to add a threatening weapon in the bag.

I took a commanding lead pretty early scoring at least 7 or 8 qwirkles before Liz scored any. She was pretty grumpy by the end, but she did pretty well for making so few qwirkles.

Afterwards, we were so close to Guardian Games that we walked over there and I had Liz pick out something she liked. She was a bit overwhelmed. She got more into it when we started looking at the used games. She eyed up a number of them, but she talked herself out of all of them. As we were leaving the section she noticed a bean farming game and I suggested we just get a smaller game about bean farming.

Bohnanza 2-7 players
Liz had heard a lot about this game, but never really looked into it. I had heard whispers of it, but looked into it more when she mentioned it to me.
You are bean farmers. You all start with 5 cards, but must keep them in the order you have them in. On your turn you must plant the first bean in your hand and possibly the next. You only have 2 fields to plant so think wisely. Next you draw cards from the deck and flip them up. You make deals with other players to trade beans. This is the only way to get rid of beans in your hand you don't want to plant. After the dealing is done you add the beans to plant to your fields. Then you add a few more cards to the back of your hand. Once you get enough beans in a field you can sell it for profit. How much depends on how many beans you have in there and what type of bean it is. Most coins wins. I'm not really sure when the game really ends since the rules are changed a bit when you play with just two. In fact, with two there is no trading, more like getting left overs.

To play, we picked up Saba and headed to a park. We played two games. One to learn, then the second because I forgot to take a picture. We also fixed a rule that we missed in the 2-player variant which made it a bit more interesting. Even without playing with more people, it's obvious it plays better with 3 or more. After cleaning up the beans and tossing a stick with Saba we moved to...

Jaipur 2 players
Liz and I were in the market for a new game as we so often were years ago, so we headed to Cloud Cap to peruse the section. The owner gave a glowing recommendation for this game saying it was the perfect couples came. In the card game, you're getting goods (cards) to sell for profit. On your turn you can do one of three things: grab one card from the market and replace it from the draw pile, grab multiple cards from the market and replace them with cards from you hand, or sell goods from your hand. In addition to goods like spices, silk, and gold, are camels. You can't sell camels, but they don't count toward your hand limit of 7 and if you have the most of them at the end of the round, you get a bonus 5 points. When selling goods, you can sell only one type of good a turn. Each good you sell gets you tokens for each good. If you sell 3 or more on a turn you get a bonus token. The round ends when the deck runs out or 3 of the goods token piles run out. Best of three rounds wins. It's a nice game. The only flaw to the game for me is that it takes a little while to set up this small game. you have to stack the goods piles in the right order with the most valuable of the goods on top of each pile. Not that big of a drawback, but it does sway me a bit when I'm selecting a game.

I won the first round by a bit. Liz killed me on the second round. I made a glorious come back in the final round. The cards had forgiven me for whatever wrong I had done them. Thank you cards.

We headed back to the house and had Darrin over. We started with with a game of Bohnanza. It is much better with more players. We also noticed another small rule we missed. I like it. Up next:

Agricola 1-5 players

I picked this game up at Cloud Cap a while ago. I went there with Liz with the purpose of finding a new game to play. I showed Liz a number of games that I thought she might be into or that I thought I might be into. Agricola was one of the first ones I put in front of her. She didn't think much of it at first. We looked at a number of others and eventually we regrouped and focused on two or three games. We came back to Agricola and Liz noticed something in the corner of the box: Now with Animeeples. For those who have no clue what that is, they are small wooden tokens cut into the shape of animals, in this case sheep, boars, and cattle. There was no doubt in Liz's mind. I was a little worried since most of what I had heard made it seem like this was a heavy game to learn. We played the family side of the game first to get a handle on it. The idea of the game is that you are a farmer in central Europe in the 1670's trying to build your farm and grow your family. Sounds like a game you can't pass up, right? It wasn't as hard to grasp as people had made it seem. It's hard and stressful, but pretty cool. Liz likes the game more than I do. I think it might be her favorite worker placement. I think the cards make it a bit random. We've played with drafting and that levels out the randomness a bit, but it makes the lead-up even longer. This is also the first game that I got an ArtBox to organize all the bits in. It makes things so much easier than bags.

We used the an expansion deck (Gamer Deck). I didn't get much use out of it, but that's not much new for me. I was able to grab start player and keep it for most of the game. I was able to get a good vegetable food system going. Liz had a lot in the way for agriculture, but not many animals, Darrin the reverse. My diversity paid off in the end.

Liz got tired of games and needed time to eat so Darrin and I played...

Chez Geek 2-5 players
Darrin brought this with him. It's a little like Munchkin because it's made by the same designer.
You are each roommates with different crappy jobs. Depending on the job you each have a certain amount of free time and cash to spend on your turn. You play cards you gain slack. You're limited in cards only by free time and cash. There are other cards that invite friends or pets and cancel cards. It's pretty random, but it doesn't ever seem to last too long.

I was a security guard with little in the way of income. I barely pulled off the win. It came down to a die roll to determine the slack I'd get from card game. Pretty meta.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow so many other good games coming.

Tally: 13/148  Bonus: 3/50

Alive and Kicking

I got an special message in my inbox today. It was an alert for...

EJiPT 2-4 players
I saw an ad for the Kickstarter a year or so ago and had to click. I loved the art style. The game seemed cute and innovative too. It's pretty short and simple. You roll a 4 sided die (pyramid) and move any number of spaces up to that number. Whatever tile you land on will alter the temple corridor in some way (moving the room, rotating the room, or deactivating the room.) Once you make it to the end of the corridor, you get 3 ankhs to return to the temple. Once you return the ankhs, you've lifted the curse and you can finally exit the temple. It seemed like the perfect pub game. Unfortunately, they canceled the project due to low funding. I really wanted to play, so I grabbed what art I could and made my own version. The game just, and I mean today, relaunched on Kickstarter and I gladly pledged to get an official copy. Feel free to check it out and chip in if you want.

Today's game lasted a lot longer than usual. It was a reverse tug-of-war where both of us needed to get rid of the purple ankh, but both of us were hoping to get the other to flip the purple board back over. Eventually I flipped it and had the lead for a short second. On my way to place the red ankh, I tripped on my shoe laces and turn the lights out in the red room. Liz ran off with the win.

Tally: 9/147  Bonus: 2/50

Hopping to It

I woke up to a text message today. It was Becky letting me know she had won Stone Age that morning with a score of 178. I'm really glad she likes it.
When Liz got home from work I was starving so she suggested the Hawthorne Hophouse and...

Cribbage 2-4 players 
I'm not really sure when I started playing cribbage. Probably sometime in college during one of those relaxing days sitting in a cabin near Lake Superior. I've never learned how to play more than a 2 player game and I almost always forget if you need the shared card in order to score a flush. I taught Liz one day and she truly enjoys it. When we go out to eat, I'd say we bring cribbage at least a quarter of the time. She still misses points in her hand now and then, but I don't play to steal her points. That's just mean. I had a computer program once and it played that way. I never once won against it. I swear it was rigged. I hated that thing with a burning passion eventually.

 

This game was pretty even keel for a large majority. In the end, Liz got a number of break-away scoring opportunities and she pounced on them. I could blame my loss on being exhausted from the 30 mile bike ride I went on in the morning, but she beat me fair and square. She even caught 2 points I missed.

Tally: 8/147  Bonus: 2/50

International Tabletop Day

This is day one of my gaming challenge. I chose this day since it had gaming significance and I didn't think I could wait until my birthday to start this project. I had originally planned to head to a game store and play with Liz and other randos. It would give me the chance to get some of the free promos. But it seemed that a number of our friends and family had the idea to make a gaming meet-up on the same day. This worked for me. I can always try to find the promos on eBay anyway.

Stone Age 2-4 players

We started the day off with one of Becky's games. Liz and I gave this one to her as a birthday present. She hadn't even cracked it open yet. Mmmmm, fresh game! It's as basic of a worker placement you can get. You're all cave people trying to keep your tribe alive. You take actions to gain resources, bonus points, tools, or more workers. The gimmick with this game is that you roll dice to see how many resources you get. The more workers you send, the more dice you get. Each material has a different scale factor making certain ones more valuable than others.

We had a four player game going with Becky, Carl, Steve, and myself. Liz read us the rules, but sat out and watched from time to time. Since this was our first time, no one really started with a strategy, but it became a little clearer mid-game. I was going for lots of tools and green cards with a complete abstinence policy (no more workers). Steve was making as many babies as he could and grabbing as many cards to boot. Becky and Carl seemed to go with a little bit of everything. In the end, It was a pretty close race, but the bonus points from the cards separated the pack. I towered over everyone having gotten one of each green card and most of the cards for tool points.

I liked the game and not just because I won. It's nowhere near my favorite of course. I like a little more in the way of choices for worker placements. I felt a bit limited in what I could do and I mean that offensively and defensively. Becky loves the game though and that's all the really matters to me.

Jamaica 2-6 players
I needed a racing game in my collection and I was between this and Formula D. Jamaica was cheaper and had a cooler theme. I feel like everyone should have this game. You are all pirates on the island of Jamaica taking part in the annual race around the island. Everyone has three cards with a symbol on the left and right. The left is the day action and the right is the night action. The starting player rolls 2 dice and decides which number goes to the day and which goes to the night. Then everyone secretly plays one of their three cards. So if it's 3 in the day and 2 in the night, you might have the options to move forward 3 and gain 2 gold or possibly gain 3 gunpowder and gain 2 food. As you move and fill your cargo hold, you needed to pay food or gold to stay at your location or drift back until you can. You may even gain treasures or bonus powers. If you land on a space with another ship, you must battle by using another special die roll aided by any gunpowder you have. The winner can empty one of your holds or steal a treasure. The game ends when someone passes the finish line. The person with the most points wins.

The game itself is thoughtfully designed. The box looks like a treasure chest and the instructions like a treasure map. Everything has its space to fit in the box and won't shuffle around how ever you store it. You know it's a good game if the design extends beyond just the game.

Our play of the game was quite non-confrontational. Steve took giant leaps ahead, Carl pretty much stayed in one place for the first half, and Darrin, Liz, and I moved at a pretty causal pace. In the whole game there was only 3 sea battles all of which saw Darrin losing. I was the only one to cross the finish line, but came in 3rd. Steve had a lot of gold and treasure so he was 1st, Liz 2nd, Darrin 4th, and Carl last even though he had caught up to most of us. The game might have been more entertaining with some more cannonballs flying, but it was a great day for a race all the same.

King of Tokyo 2-8 players

This game was all the craze well before I got it. I'm not sure when I cracked, but I probably should have gotten it earlier. It's so simple and fun. You are all monsters terrorizing Tokyo and competing king of the hill style. You roll special dice in a Yahtzee fashion to earn points, gain energy, heal yourself, or beat up others. You can use energy to buy powers. If you're outside Tokyo, you can only beat up the monster in Tokyo. If you're the monster in Tokyo, you beat up everyone outside Tokyo, but you can't heal. I got both the expansions and made a lovely insert to fit it all.

This was actually a pretty short game. Carl ended up winning on points. he had a great combo of having an extra die to roll and the power of scoring 9 points if he could roll one of each symbol. He did it twice. We did our best to kill him, and may have succeeded had we had one more go round, but It just wasn't meant to be. To be honest, even had we killed him, I think I may have died soon after him. It's hard out there for an alienoid.

Pairs 2-8 players
This is a cute little pub game. There is no winner, just one loser. The deck has numbered cards: one 1 card, two 2 cards, three 3 cards, ..., and ten 10 cards. At the start of a round everyone gets one card dealt face up and the lowest card starts. On your turn you either take another card from the deck or pass and take points. If you take a card and the number matches a card you have, then the round ends and you take points equal to the number that got paired. If it doesn't match, the turn moves to the next player. If you pass, the round ends and you take points equal to the lowest card on the table. It's very quick and clear. There are many versions of the game, some which include bonus games. My version doesn't include a bonus since I really liked the art style of the fruit pack.

Ida was insistent we play this one. It's a game she gets and enjoys a lot. It's so short we were able to get two games in. Since there is not a lot of thought necessary, it gives a lot of time for players to poke fun and crack wise. This made for a very light-heated and jovial atmosphere. Steve lost the first game and Darrin lost the second. I forget what exactly their punishments were, but it had something to do with hooking up hoses under the house and pooping on the roof.

7 Wonders 2-7 players
This is the drafting card game that defines them all. You are all ancient societies progressing though time. You draft cards (pick a card, pass the rest to the left) to gain resources, trading posts, armies, science, money, victory points, or levels of your wonder. The neat little thing about this game is that if you don't have the resources to build something, you can pay your neighbors (the person to your left and right) to fill in some of the gaps. You do this over three rounds (ages) and the most victory points wins. You never really know who's winning in this game until the end because you are spending all your time looking at your own board and the two boards next to you. The boards on the other side of the table could be doing anything, I mean they are a world away.

We played two games. The first with just the base game and the second with the Tower of Babel module. I forget who woe the first game, I just know I wasn't in last place. I think I was 3rd to last and the was a three-way tie for 2nd. The second game had me at the bottom and Sarah at the top. I've played this game many times before and with a number of different expansions, but this was the first time we played with Babel. I will tell you that this new expansion really changes the game. Most of the time you end up getting screwed in one way or another. Very little good comes from that tower, but that isn't to say it's a bad addition. It's just a completely different beast. You have to keep your wits about you.

The Resistance: Avalon 5-10 players
Avalon is basically the same game as The Resistance. It just has a different theme. When I first heard about The Resistance from Shut Up & Sit Down, I was not interested for a few reasons. The first reason was that it required at least 5 people and at the time I had no gaming group nor did I ever see 4 other people I knew at the same time. The other reason was because it seemed like acting was required. In a way it is, but not in the way I was thinking. It seemed to me that the game was driven by player input similar to games like D&D, Fiasco, or Once Upon A Time. What you would create would make the game, meaning you needed players willing to let go of the idea of winning and simply get lost into their character and let the story drive them. That just seems silly to me. Of course, I was wrong. A few years later Shut Up & Sit Down did a full play through of Avalon and it looked like a very cool game. Plus, by that time, I had people I regularly played games with, so the player number was less of a factor.
In Avalon, you are Knights of the Round Table. There are some in the group there to undermine the knight's goals. Unfortunately, most of the faithful knights have no clue who the evil minions of Mordred are (other than Merlin). The Minions on the other hand know exactly who the other minions are. During the game, one person will chose a certain number of members to go on a quest. Everyone votes if they like the team. If the majority doesn't like the team a new leader makes a new team and they vote again. If the majority is cool with the team, they embark on the quest. The members on the quest secretly vote to pass or fail the quest. Good knights would only ever pass the quest. Minions can choose to pass or fail. Any fail votes will fail the quest. The good guys win if they can get 3 out of 5 successful quests and the Minions don't know who Merlin is.

I have only attempted this game 3 times before. The first try ended in the "getting to know you're fellow minions" phase. As the moderator, I noticed that one person was confused as crap after the set up. I asked if she was a minion and she didn't see her other minion companion. She said yes. I picked the drunkest person and flipped their card: Minion. We started over. This time I was a minion and everything was going smoothly. Darrin was in a bad mood or something and was blatantly voting everything down. Even then the game seemed too easy for the bad guys. This made me think that the drunk was Merlin. After we failed the 3rd quest I flipped his card again: Merlin. The last time I attempted this, no one was too drunk and Darrin was in a much better mood. Everything went wrong throughout the game. People voted with the wrong cards, people didn't know the difference between blue and black, good guys failed missions to attempt subterfuge. It was a colossal failure. Why was this so hard?
On this night I was determined to get it going. Steve had played it before and he even said it was one of his favorite games. Becky and Darrin would have no part of it. Spliters! Sarah was on the fence and leaning towards bailing, but gave it a try. This meant a 5-player game. Steve suggested that we play without Merlin to make it easier. I was quite adamant about keeping him in, but caved just so that I could actually play the damn game.
In the first game, Carl and I were the minions and we did a poor job of keeping things under wraps, that or Steve did a really good job of convincing people we were phonies. We were only able to fail one of four missions. In the second game we included Merlin. This made the game much more livelier. There were accusations flying everywhere. Sarah and I were evil and I was the assassin. I had a strong feeling Liz was Merlin since Carl and Steve seemed very confused on each turn. I was right, but it didn't matter. Carl and Steve were doing such a good job of being confused that Sarah and I were able to beat them before the last mission. By the end, Sarah had changed her opinion of the game. Now if I can just get Sarah and Liz to sway Becky, I might be able to play a game with more than 5 people.

Coconuts 2-6 players
This was a Kickstarter that I had never heard of until after its public release. I caught it on an episode of Gamenight! and was sold. It's basically beer pong without the drinking and you can steal cups from other players. Oh, and you use cute little spring-loaded monkeys to fling tiny rubber coconuts instead of ping pongs. I played it with my family and they just had to have it. It made Xmas shopping easy. I eventually got the expansion through Kickstarter to allow for 6 players and to add more coconuts and cards. I had to make a new box to fit it all. I'm quite proud of it.

This was my first 6-player game and also the first time the new cards from Cocunuts Duo got some use. Becky was busy putting the kids to sleep, plus she gave the impression that she did want to play it anyway. I think that girl has a bad attitude. Anyway, I started out strong by nabbing a number of red cups right away. This may have put a target on me, but I never dipped below 3 cups. Eventually Carl made his presence known and he was the one to beat most of the game. He had a hard fought victory with all the cards shooting his way, but he earned his win.

Rise of Augustus 2-6 players
A.K.A. Bingo for gamers. This got on my radar when it was up for the Spiel des Jahres. It was a very simple game. A person pulls a token with a symbol out of a bag. If you have that symbol on one of you cards you can cover one of them. If you fill a card, you yell "Ave Caesar!" and get a new card and possibly a few other bonuses. After one player gets 7 finished cards the game ends and everyone tallies their points. I love this game for being so simple, but mostly because there is very little down time. The only time you are waiting for another player is when they are picking out a new card. This game just sails. It's also the kind of game my mom would like because you don't have to think too often.

Becky was very keen to get another game a Stone Age in which meant we needed to break into groups since it maxes out at 4. Sarah played this with me while Liz watched (she was tired). I end up winning quite handily. I had a lot of high point cards and a number of bonus tokens. Sarah had a few tokens of  her own, but her cards weren't getting her much in the way of points.

Mall Madness 2-4 players
The story goes like this. Liz was feeling down about work and I was intent on fixing that. Since we needed food and also needed to get a present for her sister's birthday. I told her that we could go get tacos and as we picked out a present she could get any game she wanted. We stopped by Red Castle Games game first. Liz scanned the store with droopy eyes and a bad attitude. She noticed a clearance table that was still out from the stores 5th anniversary. Her eyes immediately lit up as she squealed to me, "Mall Madness. I want that one!" I was happy to oblige. It was only fitting that I get a game about finding items on sales and clearances actually on clearance.

We needed one more game to play while we waited for the Stone Age game to end and this had the right feel and time length. Sarah played as...Sarah, a "friendly girl who is into just about everything. She can be girly at times but she also likes to compete at sports and build things." I played as Scott a "talkative boy who's really into games. He excels at science and math and is also a big music fan." Hmmm, I bit too on the nose.

This is not a game of winning. At least, not for adults. This is a game of enjoying the nostalgia and laughing at the things you buy. I got prescription shades at the Sunglasses store for $20,. They were on clearance. Every game is always a close game. I ended up winning, but Sarah wasn't far behind me.

That ends the first of many days to come.

Tally: 7/147  Bonus: 2/50