Mmmm... Godzilla

We were celebrating Thom's birthday today. It was Wednesday, but we got together for it today. Liz and I got there early enough to play a few games starting with...

The Simpsons Trivia Game 2-5 players
This game is a lot like The Simpsons: Bart's Trivia Game, but plays a little faster. You still answer trivia questions. There are still 5 levels of difficulty. You still earn characters, but not as cards. It's kept track of on a check box sheet. You still do Pictionary or Charades to earn characters. The only other differences are that the questions are less focused on Bart and you only have to answer 2 trivia question correctly instead of 3 to earn the chance to get a character.

Liz, Sarah, Carol, and Thom played in on this one. It went a lot faster since most of the easy question were true false and the shorter question bar. Liz was pretty good at answering on Pictionary and moved fast on the track. I was close behind, but she still won the game.

I liked that it played faster, but it's still in the donation pile as far as we are all concerned.

Superfight: The Loot CrateDeck 2-10 players
This was another game I got from a co-worker who was trying to reduce his game collection. He kind of left it on my desk and it was small enough that I didn't bother seeing if I wanted it or not. It's barely a game since the rules don't indicate and ending point or an overall winner. Imagine the argument of Batman vs Superman made with a kind of Apples to Apples mechanic. Two players draw 3 character and 3 modification cards. They each pick one character and one modification to be their fighter. Each player reveals their choice and then gives the group there reasoning why their fighter would win in a fight. The other players vote and the max vote wins the fight. The loser is removed and another player creates a new fighter to go up against the winner. A fighter with 3 wins in a row is retired. I assume the game ends when the cards run out or the players are sick of the game. There are some special modification cards that can be added if you want to make a location or rules or extra weapons for the fight.

We started with Liz, Carol, Thom and myself, but as people started showing up some people entered and others left. Occasionally we would call for a tie breaker vote from the crowd of non-players. None of us ever created a fighter that was retired, but a few came close. We did use the special modifications after a few rounds just to see how they played. After we exhausted the decks we put it away.

They "game" is pretty good. It's a lot of stupid fun. It's hilarious to hear some of the bizarre reasoning why one fighter would win over another. Like how even though King Arthur with acid filled water balloons could take down the army of skeletons with machetes while all riding on a roller coaster, the skeletons would just put themselves back together and dominate.  If I ever see any other the other Superfight decks, I may add them too the collection.

We did get one more game in before dinner. Becky, Carl, Christina(?), Liz and I played Diamonds. I still love this game. I didn't do too horrible, but Christina killed us all. Never go up against a Norwegian when diamonds are on the line.

Tally: 179/185  Bonus: 44/50

Probably the Only D&D I'll Play

The family got together for breakfast at Six Corners Cafe. Afterwards, Liz went to work and Carol took Jack to something, They rest of us met up at the Wilborn's to play. Becky got to painting the house and Sarah, Carl and I got to...

Lords of Waterdeep 2-5 players
Liz got this game for Carl last Xmas. He hadn't gotten to actually playing it until now. It's a worker placement game set in the D&D city of Waterdeep. Each player is given a secret bonus goal (based on quests) at the start. During the game, players can place their works to get adventures, gold, buildings, quests, and/or intrigue cards. After placing a worker, the player has the chance to complete one of their active quest (or mandatory quest) by paying the requisite adventurers and/or gold. Victory points are earned mostly from quests, and sometimes buildings or intrigue cards. After 8 rounds, the player with the most victory points wins.

Sarah and I started strong. Carl was just bidding his time though. He took an early hit to gain an extra worker that gave him a lot of extra bang for most of the game. Soon enough I was chasing after Carl and Sarah. I was able to score enough endgame points to get second place, but not near enough to out do Carl.

This is a really good game. It's pretty basic and was easy to teach and learn. The quests that pop out can be a little luck based, but it's about the only thing that can sway the game to one player or another and there are measures that can be take to mitigated that a bit.

We almost played another game, but ran out of time.

Tally: 177/185  Bonus: 44/50

Aye, Caribbean!

Sarah came over after her and Liz went to a baby shower. This gave me the perfect opportunity to play a smaller stupid game.

The Simpsons: Bart's Trivia Game 2-5 players
I got this as a present sometime in high school, back in the day when getting me anything Simpson was a good bet. I never played it as a kid. It's pretty much what you expect from a trivia game based on a single TV show. Each player can set a level of difficult at the beginning (1-5). Players take turns answering question. After getting 3 right, they have the opportunity to get a character card. This then starts a Pictionary or charades mini game which earns the player the card and the person who answer correctly 2 free trivia cards. Sometimes you just get the card or get to steal a card for the price of 3 trivia cards and sometimes you have to do a word/letter scramble. It's all based on a die roll. The first player to earn one of each of the 5 character cards wins.

It went pretty much as you'd expect. It plays a little weird since sometimes you're at the mercy of the character card at the top of the deck. I think it wass there way of making a catch up mechanic, but it's very weird and makes the game unnecessarily longer. Eventually we all had 4 characters. Sarah got the lucky roll. The last character card requires answering 2 out of 3 trivia question in a row. Sarah simply got the first 2 right.

As soon as all of this is done, this game is in the donate pile. The rules are pretty clunky and no one in there right mind would want to play this unless they love the Simpsons or they were dared to.

We cleaned up and headed to the parents for dinner with Becky and Carl. After dinner I set up...

Puerto Rico 3-5 players
I got this game as a present about a year or two ago. I mainly had it on my wishlist because it seemed like such a big game. By that I mean it has a large presence in the gaming world. It was ranked the #1 game on Board Game Geek for a good number of years before being knocked down a few pegs. I had never played it, but did see it played during a sale at Cloud Cap Games.

You are each agriculturalist on Puerto Rico. You are trying to make the most fruitful goods business by growing, trading, and shipping corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. On your turn, you select an action. In this game you can only chose actions that haven't been taken that round. When you select it, everyone takes the action (usually), but you get a bonus to the action. Actions range from getting goods, colonists, buildings, money, plantations, and victory points. The game ends when the colonist supply or victory point supply runs out.

This was a okay game. It was basically everyone's first time so there was a lot of "why did/didn't that happen" being asked of me. Everyone but Becky got the hang of it by mid-game. Becky spent most of the game doing one thing wrong or another. In fact, one time see did four different things wrong on one action. She probably had to much wine to play well. I did alright, but made a number of poor decisions. Carl had a good thing going and was able to take the win.
This is a really good game and it's pretty obvious why it's ranked so high. It's got clean mechanics, keeps all the players involved on every turn, and takes a lot of brain power to play well. It's a little annoying that the minimum player count is three. There is a two-player variant made by fans, but this isn't one of those game where a two-player variant works as good as the real thing.

Tally: 177/185  Bonus: 43/50

Gone Fishin'

Instead of Liz and her friends going to trivia, they all came to the house and we played...

Fleet 1-6 players
I watched a gameplay video and loved it. It's an interesting bidding game where the cards act as...everything:money, boats, and captains. I pledged toward the kickstarter for the expansion and added on the base game.
During the game you use your hand of cards to bid on contracts. Once you have contracts, you play you cards as boats which get you fish. Each contract gives you a special ability too. The more of the same contract you have, the stronger the ability. The game starts out slow, but as you build your fleet and number of contracts, it ramps up quick. The game ends once you get through all the contracts or all the fish. Points are based off of contracts, boats, and fish you have.

We had a 5-player game going with Liz, Raeann, Jess, Sarah, and myself. Jess started with and early jump with a Processing Vessel contract. I got some early discounts with a Shrimp contract. Raeann and Sarah got a good card income with Lobster, Swordfish and Tuna licenses. Liz got a little bit of everything. Sarah made some big victory point purchases, but the game changer was over the King Crab contract. Jess and Liz bid all the way up to 13 coin. That pretty much clinched the win for Liz. She beat us all by about 10 or 15 points.

I really, really like this game. I love the diversity of the cards and because of that you always have a couple of options even if you miss out on a contract you really wanted. Unfortunately, there are two big problems: set up and clean up. The set up of the game is base off of the number of players and is kind of confusing if you haven't played in a while. You can only have so many of certain types of contracts. I made a small setup chart to keep is simple. After the game, you have to separate everything back out. Imagine that after you finished playing rummy with two different decks of cards, you had to organizes the cards by their suits and decks. It's time consuming. I always see this game on the shelf and want to play, but every time I think about that last fact, I avert my eyes.

Tally: 175/185  Bonus: 43/50

Running Around Squares

I was eager to finish my list of games so I asked Liz during dinner if she'd be up for one. She was, but only after some cool down. Not too soon after dinner she was ready to go and I set up...

Zombies!!! 2-6 players
Aaaaahhhhhhahahh Zombies!!! I mean... aah, "Zombies!!!". This is the game that reminded me board games are fun. I was in college at the time and my friend Andy brought it over to play. It was the most interesting thing I had seen: modular playing board and two possible win conditions. I was enthralled. I would have bought a copy for myself if I didn't have to spend my money on food and rent. This meant I had to be thrifty and nothing is thriftier than no money at all. I dived into some of my old board games. Emily H. got into it too and we had a go at a number of games collecting dust in her basement too. I remember one of them being a fantasy war game that was played on a plastic mat that took up most of the kitchen. Awesome times. Anyway, once I got back into gaming in Portland, I had the money to blow and this was high on my list. It was a no-brainer.

Zombies are rampant and you need to get the crap out of town. On your turn, you add a tile to the town, add the appropriate zombies and supplies to the tile then roll and move. If you run into a zombie and can roll higher than 3 you kill it an add it to your collection. If you didn't roll high enough you can spend a bullet or two to add pips or you can spend hearts to reroll. You can play a card during your turn to help or play one during other players turns to hinder. The first player to get to the helipad or the first player to collect 25 zombies wins.

This was the most screwed up game we every played. Both of us were just about to go zombie shooting in buildings for pick-ups, but the helipad showed up pretty early. This changed both of our game plans. Liz had no problem booking it to the pad. I couldn't seem to roll over a 2 for movement. The few times I did, Liz would play a card that would move me back or slow me down. I eventually died just before Liz was able to get one space away from winning. This caused me to lose half of my zombies, start over at the center of town, and get new cards and tokens. On my next turn, I was able to play a card that let me move 10 spaces. The helipad was 9 spaces way. It happened so fast, Liz had to ask me to explain what just happen. A weird win for me.
In retrospect, I'm not a huge fan of the game. A lot of the cards are only good in certain locations and when you know you'll never make it there or it's not in play yet, it makes the card pretty useless. Wandering around town without a weapon sucks and unless you get just the right card, you're going to be that way for a while. There is also a rule where you can only use one card per round, but we ignore that since that's just stupid. Actually, in retroretrospect, the cards might be the only thing I hate about the game. If the cards were more useful or could be used in multiple locations, that would add that extra boost it needs.

Liz was in the mood to play another tile and movement game after this: Gold Mine. This was much more fun. I had the lead for most of the game, but after a bit of digging, Liz caught up. Oddly enough, we both got 10 gold nuggets one after the other. I had a little longer path to the exit, so I slowed her down with Bat Challenges. She tried to slow me down as well, but the dice were in love with me allowing me to throw it back in her face. We were finally out of challenges and I was close enough to roll in for the win. Hazzah!

Tally: 174/185  Bonus: 43/50

Super Space

The family and a few friends gathered at Rancho Thomaso for the Super Bowl. I didn't really care who won, so I was only casually paying attention. After dinner, Liz was able to wrangle some people to play...

Cosmic Encounter 3-5 players
I got this game recently for Xmas. I've constantly heard that it is one of the greatest games in existence so I've had it on my wishlist for a while, but never bothered to pick it up just by myself. Each player starts with 5 home planets and 4 ships on each planet. The goal of the game is to become the first player to have 5 colonies on planets other than on your own home planets. This is accomplished by invading other players. On a player's turn, he or she becomes the offense. The offense encounters another player on a planet by moving a group of his or her ships through the hyperspace gate to that planet. The offense draws from the destiny deck which contains colors, wilds and specials. The player then takes the hyperspace gate and points at one planet in the system indicated by the drawn destiny card. The offense vs. the defenses ships are in the encounter and both sides are able to invite allies, play an encounter card as well as special cards to try and tip the encounter in their favor. Each player then plays a cosmic card and the higher total (card number plus ships) usually wins. If the offense wins they and the allies take up colonies on the planet. If not, then they and the allies lose their ships to the warp. Now, I said usually, because each player gets their own race that creates a few new rules for them. Races do most anything from letting you gain more cards, or letting you win and encounter with a lower total, or letting you win the game when you lose all your ships. The races are what make the game interesting.

We had a five player game going. I was the Pacifist meaning I "always" won an encounter when playing a negotiate card. Becky was the Will meaning she could choose who to attack as the offense. Liz was the Vulch meaning she got to grab everyone else's used artifact cards. Raeann was the Clone meaning she could take her played encounter card back into her hand. Finally, Sarah was the Healer meaning she could return player's lost ships once lost, and in doing so, gained a card for each. People were a little confused at first and it took a little teeth pulling, but everyone eventually got into the swing of things. Soon Sarah, Raeann, and I had acquired 4 colonies with Liz trailing and Becky trailing her. Raeann was on the offense and Sarah on the defense. I assumed that I was out of a win condition, but Raeann invited me to ally with her. I knew she would be unstoppable with her 30 card she continued to use. Liz tried to help Sarah, but she just didn't have enough. Raeann and I tied for the win.

I love this game. I can see what everyone is talking about now. I know I can get a few people to play this, but I'm not sure I've got Liz as a guarantee. She really hates war games or games where you attack other players. It stresses her out, partly because she doesn't often think with the mindset of war strategy and partly because she doesn't want to seem like a "bad guy". I understand her stance. If the game had everyone always choosing who they attacked, she would never play the game again, but since it's not a war game in the strictest sense, I still have some play with enticing her.

We took it easy after that. Becky and Sarah went off to play Dutch Blitz while Raeann, Liz, and I played Machi Koro and The Grizzled. I won Machi and we won the first game of Griz. We play a secong game of The Grizzled and took it up a notch. We died horribly.

Tally: 173/185  Bonus: 43/50

Spun

I was ready to knock another game off the list. After we ate and finished watching some TV I got out...

Word Spin 1-8 players

This is a game, that we never use as a game. It's more of a toy that we leave on the bookcase. Every now and then we change the message dialed in on it for the other to notice. I even used in in my proposal. We've only actually played it once. It's okay, but it's better as a clunky non-postable behind-the-scenes Post-It note. Each player gets 4 dials. Each dial has 10 letters on it. Players simultaneously race to create a 4 letter word. Once someone does, they call "Word Spin!" and everyone has 5-10 seconds to finish. Starting with the caller, all words and words within words are scored. No word can get scored twice in the game. After words are scored, players exchange all their dials to the other players and the next round starts. Similar things repeat for 6 rounds. Highest score wins.

It was a close game until the fifth round when I scored nothing. Liz took the cake. It still remains a poor game, but a great tchochkey.

We then played Roll for the Galaxy. I had just gotten the Ambition expansion and wanted to test it out. I also wanted to play because the expansion made me realize that we were playing two rules wrong. It was a pretty close game. We each score an objective (part of the expansion). I won by about 6 points.

Tally: 172/185  Bonus: 43/50