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Category Archives: Board Games

Posts about our weekly game nights.

De Vulgari Eloquentia & 7 Wonders

De Vulgari Eloquentia
Way back before we even went to Gen Con, we started a game of De Vulgari Eloquentia. In the game the players are creating a new language. One that will be commonly spoke in all of Italy. The aim of the game is to gain victory points (or Volgare points) by reading manuscripts, looking for important documents, and by improving their social status. Sounds exciting doesn’t it. It’s actually not too bad. During a turn you get to take a number of actions. Each of these actions cleverly move you towards victory. Whether it’s discovering the lost manuscripts in an area of Italy or gaining profit from your small business.

During our game, I found it difficult to figure out just what I should be doing. One of the plethora of actions you can take during a turn is to “buy” the support of Politicians, businessmen, and others. These are represented by cubes of various colors and are kept behind a screen. During the last part of the game, these are used for voting and can grant you a lot of VP if you play your cards right, which I didn’t. It seems that if you were taking your actions later in the turn, all the good support was already gone. That was my problem, so I majored in manuscripts, for which you get direct VPs from. It didn’t help.

It also didn’t help that we played half the game and then came back three weeks later to finish it. Although we weren’t crazy about the game, I think we’d all like to play it again now that we have an idea of how the VPs work.

Ben won our game with 42 points. Owen was a very close second with 41. I had 27 and Mike had 24. So much for our manuscript reading skills.

We got done a little early and decided to play a game of 7 Wonders. I love this game. This game does not love me. As this picture shows:
7w_Score_G5_R1_2013-09-09

Chaos Steve

Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery

(Wow, I’m current again!)

(It won’t last.)

This week we played Spartacus, a board game based on the first season of the  STARZ TV show. We have it on good authority that this is a fun game. In the game each player is a dominus over a house in ancient Rome. In the game, each player has assets (gladiators, slaves, and guards) that they purchase and manage with the gold they accumulate. We discovered early on that gold is very important to your success…just like in the real Rome of the past. Players also have intrigue cards that can hurt your enemies and help you. One of the most important part of the game is hosting a gladiator tournament. The host earns influence and gets to invite the participants. Declining an invitation is bad for your influence, so when invited, you go. You win the game by reaching 12 influence.

Mike hosted the first tournament and invited himself and Ben to participate. Ben made a horrific decision during the combat that gave Mike the fight winning advantage. Mike’s gladiator did win, garnishing even more influence for Mike. The game pretty much continued on this way with Mike gaining influence while the rest of us plotted to bring him down—behind his back of course. Mike won. (Although I see a slave revolt in his future.)

We all liked the game. We played the short version so it only took about 2 hours to play and that’s with reading the rules and setting the game up. Next time we’ll have to play a full game. Maybe one of my gladiators will get invited to a tournament.

Chaos Steve

Rolling Freight

rolling freight
We met at Ben’s to play another new train game called Rolling Freight. We replace Evil Mike (who was on vacation) with Mike Byrd. A good trade in any dimension.

The board to this game just looks weird…and maybe complicated. Thankfully, once you understand the rules, it all becomes clear. (Ok, so maybe that’s true with all games, but just look at the board!) One cool thing is the game has its own colorful dice and lots of them. Gamers like dice and bright, flashy objects…er, colors.

We played two games, sort of. I’m going to capitalize this next sentence because I’ll never get to write it again. WE STOPPED THE FIRST GAME OF ROLLING FREIGHT BECAUSE I WAS SO FAR AHEAD. Yes, you read that right. I was so far ahead that it completely demoralized the other guys. (They hate losing to me.) Apparently I picked up on how to score points—and lots of them—pretty quickly. Or I was incredibly lucky. You decide.

So we started again. The game has three phases. After the third phase the game ends. Due to time constraints on my part, we had to stop after phase two. Just as phase two was ending I managed to get a bunch of points by building new track. This is how the game differs from the other train game we play. In this game there are a lot of points to be had just by building track. After scoring, I had a substantial lead. I left and then Ben and Owen finished their final turns. Ben said he’d tell me how the game ended. His email stated “Steve won.” That’s it. No embellishment. No scores. In the end, that’s all I needed to hear anyway. :)

Chaos Steve

Sentinels of the Multiverse, Railways through Time, and Merchants

sentinels of the multiverse
Back on July 3rd we got together and played Sentinels of the Multiverse with Ben and Owen. Mike and I really like this game. Mike used the Sentinels app on his phone to randomly generate the Villain, Environment, and Heroes we would be playing with.

The first game was brutal…for us, the heroes. The environment was extremely harsh and we were constantly battling it more than the villain. We were doomed and we knew it. The villain beat us…badly.

The next game went quite differently. Ben played a superhero whose powers could deal with nasty environmental surprises along with handily taking care of the villain’s cohorts. I don’t want to make it seem like Ben’s character won the day for us. It was a team effort. I only point out Ben’s involvement because he was actually helpful. The superhero team won. Then we destroyed a large metropolitan city.

railways through time
July 4th is Mike Byrd’s birthday. The entire country celebrates it. We took this opportunity to meet at Mike’s house and play a few games. (Evil Mike missed this one. He was at the Lakes.)

Ben brought along a new train game called Railways through Time. The game has the same general rules as Railway Tycoon (and all of the spinoffs.) The boards for each time period are small, containing only 5 to 8 cities at best. BUT you can run track into the various time warp hexes and emerge in any other time warp hex in any other time zone. This forces your strategy for delivering cubes to be a lot different from the other versions of the game. During setup, you get to pick which boards you want to use during the game. You get one more board than there are players. There are also new railroad operation cards specifically for the time periods.

Our first game found us struggling to get use to the whole travel-through-time-to-different-boards mechanic. Or as Ben put it, “thinking 4th dimensionally.” I thought I might do well in this game thinking forth dimensionally. I usually do terrible in the other versions. I didn’t do too badly. Owen ended up winning with 48 points. I was second with 46. Ben was a close third at 44 points. Mike, who is the reigning King of the Rails in the other versions, struggled through the game and ended up with just 26 points. It only took us two hours to play the game. So we played another…

This one went a little differently. For one, Mike was back as King of the Rails. Also, with the shipment of a single goods cube, I claimed four operation bounty cards. (Owen applauded my strategy. To which I had to confess I only knew about one of the cards.) Mike won this game with 55 points. I came in second again with 52. Owen was third with 50 points. Ben was distracted by squirrels and flashy objects and only got 39 points.

merchants
We still had some time before I needed to leave, so Mike got out a little game called Merchants. For a small game in a small box it was a lot of fun. Each player is a merchant who is buying, shipping, and selling goods to make money. Money wins you the game. You can also buy more ships and various other upgrades that help you along in the game, but those upgrades are limited. Surprisingly, to me at least, I won this game with 41 points. Ben had 37 and Owen had 35. Mike was distracted by squirrels and flashy objects and only got 23 points. (Those squirrels may have been his kids. Hard to tell, I was concentrating on the game.)

Chaos Steve

Through the Ages

pic236169_t
We recently played an epic game of Through the Ages. It took three nights, spread over 6+ weeks to complete. (We were playing the “Advanced” game—not the “full” game.) During the game there were many shouts of victory and screams of pain. I did pretty well during the early parts of the game. That soon ended though. Owen was a slow starter which is kind of normal for Owen. He then ends strongly, when it counts. His use of colonies was fantastic. Ben was unpredictable and had to be watched carefully. Mike had highs and lows throughout the game.

During the final game session, I know I was in trouble. You need science to play technologies and I had very little of it. My military was weak also. Mike’s military was week as well and thankfully Ben attacked him. Owen continued to methodically gain ground. Ben too. Ben and Mike were the leaders with Ben having a pretty good lead. Owen and I were fighting to not be last. Then the game ended. When the game ends you go through the remaining events and play them out. This changed everything. Ben still won with 192 points. But it was Owen, not mike, who came in second with 173 points. Mike and I were suddenly locked in a battle to not be last. In the end, Mike got 167 points which put him just ahead of my 164 points.

Three days and hundreds (yes, hundreds) of hours later, I came in last. We should have played Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Chaos Steve

History of the World

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This week we met at my house for game night. This is because I was babysitting my 6-week old grandson. I was cautiously optimistic about how this would go. The little guy gets fussy in the evenings. It turns out he was very good and the guys were very understanding of the whining and crying. Of course they are used to that already. (We whine and cry a lot at our games.)

We played History of the World. Mike Byrd also joined us, so we had 5 players. Evil Mike wasn’t supposed to be there, but apparently he left one of his evil minions in charge and came over anyway.

I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve played this game. It’s a crowd favorite. Everyone else will have to add comments once this is posted to spell out any in-game fun. All I remember is the end.

The End Mike was so far ahead of us on the victory point track, that we lost sight of his tail lights. Ben, who lagged behind during the first half of the game, had become a solid contender. So had Owen…but Owen always finishes strong. It came down to a contest between Evil Mike and I over who would be last. I thought I might take him because I still had armies on most of the continents. Unfortunately it was too little too late. When the scoring was over, I was 4th runner up.

Mike Byrd won with an amazing 212 points. (We won’t be inviting him back anytime soon.) Owen was next with 190. Ben and Evil Mike followed with 185 each. I had 180. (So since Evil Mike and Ben tied, was I 3rd runner up? Let’s hope so.)

Chaos Steve

2013-05-01 18.53.26

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

pic236169_t
Ben is off traveling the country for work, but that didn’t deter us from gaming without him. We played Owen’s copy of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. A game I have called the most complicated card game I have ever played. Thankfully of the three variations of the game you can play (Simple, Advance, and Insane), we played a couple of simple games.

Our first game ended too quickly. All of us were expecting a much longer game, so many of our plans went unfulfilled. You win by having the most culture points. Both Mike and Owen scored a lot of end-of-game points. Me, not so much. Owen and Mike ended up tying for first place. I guess that makes me second. (Certainly not last.)

We played the next game knowing full well how quickly it could end. Mike shot out of the gate and never looked back. He quickly dominated the culture and the military tracks by skillfully snatching up a great combination of cards. Owen and I languished way behind him. On the last turn of the game, I was able to play a leader that would have gained me much culture in the future…if there was a future. As it was, Mike ended the game. After scoring, Mike won, but only by a single point! It turns out Owen had A LOT of end of game points and an action card that instantly gave him 6 culture points. I was third—not last.

Chaos Steve

Dominion and Roll through the Ages

dominion
Evil Mike is in New Jersey for his work this week, but that didn’t stop Ben, Owen, and I from doing some gaming. First up we chose to play Dominion. We played with just the core set and randomly picked our 10 stacks of kingdom cards. In the first game we had a lot of kingdom cards that generated coinage. So it was no surprise when the game ended with the last 6 point victory card being bought. Ben got the majority of those 6-pointers and won the game with 52 points. I came in second with 42 points and Owen was right behind second place with 32 points. (Notice the symmetry of our scores? That’s the hallmark of real gamers. Or it could be just dumb luck.)

The second game we chose another random set of kingdom cards. This time we were heavy on cards that gave you extra actions and allowed you to draw more cards into your hand. I think Ben was the king of this. He’d play 4 or 5 actions, grabbing another 4 or 5 cards. Fortunately for us, all that card shuffling did him little good when it came to getting coinage to buy victory points and kingdom cards. Owen on the other hand, had a well-tuned deck and he continually garnered Victory Point cards. He didn’t end up with a lot of 6-pointers, but had a slew of 3-pointers. Owen won the game with 40 points. That would have got him last place in our first game. As it was Ben only scored 28 points and I had a measly 18 points. You have to wonder if Ben and I were even playing the same game as Owen.

roll
Then we switched games and played Roll through the Ages. Our first game was rather ordinary. I thought I could pull off a win by ending the game quickly. It turns out that Owen beat me by three points. Owen had 26 points. I had 23 and ben was dead last with 17 points.

Our last game of Roll through the Ages was by far the most exciting…at least at the end. Ben had rolled two Skulls on the dice. (This would normally mean Drought for him, -2 points, but he had the Development so he could ignore this.) Ben had three more dice available. If he could roll one more skull, it would mean -3 points to both Owen and I. This would probably win him the game. He rolled…and got TWO more skulls for a total of FOUR! This was Invasion or -4 points for him. Poor Ben. Owen ended the game on the next turn, but I still had one more roll of the dice. Although I didn’t have many points, with a lucky roll I could grab the Empire Development and game 13 points from it. I had six dice to roll. I immediacy rolled two skulls just like Ben. Ben and Owen both thought I should roll all of the remaining dice to try for one more skull. A -3 to both of them could win me the game. I didn’t listen to them and wasted my second roll. Now I was down to my last roll. I decided to follow their suggestion and I rolled all of the remaining dice…and got TWO more skulls just like Ben! That was -4 points to me! Oh the injustice of it all! (It was just funny when it happened to Ben.) Owen won the game with 17 points. Ben was right behind him with 16. I had a whopping 13 points thanks to that -4.

All-in-all we had a great time. We hardly missed…uh, what’s his name.

Chaos Steve

Descent 2nd Edition

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Mike Byrd (as the Evil Overlord) ran us through a third scenario from the second edition Descent game.

The game starts off with Ben being right about something. This is a bad omen.

Our adventure is to enter some caverns. Let’s call them the Caverns of Unending Death. We’re looking to save a farmer named Frederick and to kill the boss goblin named Splig. Hmm, how about Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns. (Frederick will just be Frederick.)

We enter the Caverns of Unending Death and begin looking for Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns. We’re keeping an eye out for Frederick. Instead of either of those we find a group of giant poisonous spiders. Right away the overlord charms me and forces me to attack Owen. (At least that’s what everyone believes.) The Overlord is not through though; he causes his minions to frenzy and attacks both Ben and I. He manages to only damage (and poison) me. Mike searches and finds a trap. He avoids it with ease. The Overlord spends the next 10 minutes playing cards against the poor, helpless heroes.

We kill the spiders and venture deeper into the Caverns of Unending Death. The next door we open reveals a band of barghests. They breathe on Owen, Ben, and I. Ben takes a fatigue. I take a fatigue plus a wound. Owen is untouched.

Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns interrogates two of the four farmers he has captured. If one of them is Frederick, we’re in trouble. Fortunately Frederick wasn’t one of the poor unfortunate farmers chosen.

We raced to the room where the remaining two hostage farmers were being held. Owen is able to stun a whole hallway full of goblins and get to the hostage room first. The rest of us take on the remaining goblins and barghests. Mike smashes the goblin leader with one blow! We clear the cave of underlings. Only the boss is left.

We surround him and Mike the Goblin Killer finishes off Splig the Torturous Goblin of the Caverns.

Remember those spiders we fought at the beginning of the adventure?  Ben took poison damage from the bite on every turn of the game.

The second Game:

After finishing the first game, we still had some time left, so Mike ran us through a quick game. Strangely the “quick” game’s map was twice as big as any map we’ve played through so far.

Our Quest: After already finding half of the shadow rune we must now escape the shadow vault. The shadow rune is kept in a casket carried by the dwarf (Mike). We mustn’t let the shadow rune fall into the hands of the evil Baron Zackareth. In this game we found our usual tactic of killing everything in our path doesn’t work so well.

As we move through the Shadow vault we’re almost immediately attacked by two ettins and Baron Zackareth himself. Mike kills one ettin. (I killed it once already, but we figured out that I took two turns in a row—because Mike told me to.) Owen casts a spell that makes everyone harder to hit including monsters. Still, the Baron wounds Mike. Ben rushes into help and does two wounds to the Baron. I don’t think the Baron even noticed since it takes 20 wounds to kill him. The Baron retaliates against Mike (not Ben) and does 14 wounds! Mike’s incapacitated and drops the casket containing the shadow rune. Ben will eventually pick the casket up, but not before running here and there, deciding to attack the Baron and then deciding not to. This all happens on a single “Ben” turn.

We revive Mike. He and I (heroically) try to block the Baron’s advance while Ben and Owen escape with the shadow rune. We continue on like this for a while. We run into, and killed, a gaggle of goblin archers. (A group of goblins is called a gaggle.)

At this point my notes are a little unclear. I’ve punished those responsible, sending them on a two week journey to India.

Fearing most of us will never make the required skill check to cross a stream—this would leave us forever stranded in the stream—we take the long way around it. The Baron however, swims it with no trouble and is now ahead of us.

We run into a bunch of zombies and ettins. We kill them in a tense battle that only heroes of our stature could survive.

Ben continues to take poison damage every turn. I think this is from a trap he sprung way back at the beginning of the adventure—a trap I forgot to mention. Ben and poison doesn’t mix well. We learned that in the first game.

I should mention the waterfall. There was a waterfall. We took damage going over it. The Baron did not.

Soon, it’s just us and the Baron. Ben wants to stay and fight the Baron. We’re tempted to let him (while we escape.) Instead we all make a mad dash for the exit.

We make it out!

Oh, I should mention the key. We found a key right away in the shadow vault. We thought it might be the key we needed to exit the vault. Turns out it wasn’t needed at all. It actually went to a door we never needed to go through. We sold the key to a band of gypsies.

Chaos steve

Ghost Stories with Black Secret Expansion

ghost  black secret
This week we played an old favorite, Ghost Stories. It’s a cooperative game where the players are Taoist monks trying to prevent a village from being overrun by ghosts. This week’s game had a completely different spin on it because we added the Black Secret expansion. With this expansion one of the players controls a variety of ghosts, demons, and curses. The best evil man for this job was Mike. Not just because he had read the rules, but mostly because he is evil to begin with. In the game Mike is called Wu-Feng.   The expansion also added a few other twists to the game too. Another board, called the catacombs, represented the area under the village. Wu-Feng can summon demons into the catacombs. There they searched for the three urns with which the Shadow of Wu-Feng can be summoned. If this happens, we are in really deep ghost poo. The monks can travel to the catacombs and confront the demons hopefully sending them back to hell where Mike lives.  Mike can also cast curses on us and he gets to determine where the ghosts come into the village. All in all we thought we were doomed from the start. One thing in our favor was that when we lose Qi (our life force) instead of going back to a pool of Qi, it goes onto a mantra of our choice. These mantras, once fueled with enough Qi, are powerful spells we can use against the demons and ghosts.

In our game, my monk had the power to reroll dice. Owen’s monk could take two actions and Ben’s monk got an extra colored bean at the beginning of his turn. (Yes, I know they’re not called colored beans, but I can’t remember what they are called.) We also had a fourth monk, sort of a non-playing monk, that we could use his power of special movement if we needed to.

Our game began…

To exorcise a ghost, you have to roll dice equal to the ghost’s color or have enough colored beans to fill in for any dice that failed to roll that color. With this in mind, Owen’s monk was an unstoppable exorcising machine and regularly could kill two ghosts with one roll. Ben and I were another story completely.

Ben rolled three dice and only needed black (or the “wild” color of white) on any die. He failed.

Steve rolled SIX dice and only needed one black…and failed.

Ben later redeemed his suck-i-ness. He needed three black and rolled a black and two wild dice!

As the game progressed we were holding our own and Mike’s demons where having trouble finding the third urn needed to summon the Shadow of Wu-Feng. My monk was in the catacombs trying to kill demons when one of them found the third urn. The Shadow of Wu-Feng was summoned.

On his turn, the Shadow of Wu-Feng can take one of three actions: Attack a monk, move, or haunt a village tile. (If four village tiles are haunted, the monks lose.) Things quickly got desperate. Soon we had three village tiles haunted. Then the Incarnation of Wu-Feng appeared. Fortunately the incarnation was right where Owen could immediately attack it. And it was a relatively easy one to kill. Owen rolls his first attack. He had three dice and needed two yellows—not a single yellow showed up. Owen tried his second attack with the same result. Owen’s dice rolling had gone cold just when we needed it most. Fortunately I could attack the incarnation too. With my reroll ability I basically got to roll six dice looking for two yellows. I failed miserably.  The Shadow of Wu-Feng haunted the fourth village tile and we lost.

We moved to a different village.

Chaos Steve

Some Pics:
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