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Category Archives: Board Games

Posts about our weekly game nights.

Twilight Imperium Part I

This week was the first of our two-part 4-player Twilight Imperium game. We usually have six players, so with just four, we’re hoping we can get the game done in just two weeknight sessions. I’m cautiously optimistic.

As usual setup took forever. It started well before 5:00 and ended well after 5:00. I got what we call “the War Sun race”. I started with a war sun. Mike had the race that copies technology from other races and was sitting right next to me. Can you see where this is going? And rightly so Mike’s race’s name ended in “virus”. So basically Mike is a virus scourge upon the universe. (Just like in real life.) Owen was the worm race. I mean the worm hole race. (Not sure how an entire race develops from a worm’s hole, but hey, I’m not a game developer.) Ben’s race did something special too. Something about a bunch of ground forces living together in tight quarters, I don’t remember the details.

At about one hour and thirty minutes into the game, Owen scored the first victory point. I was supposes to note the time of the first attack (by Ben) by failed to do so. I did happen after Owen’s first point though. And he did attack Owen. Unprovoked. Ben mumbled something about a victory point.

Next round Owen was prepared to strike back at Ben’s home world. Ben was completely blind to this until Mike pointed it out and ruined Owen’s chances. Owen and I gave Mike “the stare”. Mike made a lightning strike at Mecatol Rex and was able to put a small occupational force on it. Ben was salivating, wanting to attack, but could not muster the meager forces to do it.

Owen and I eyed Mecaltol Rex too. The difference was we had fleets in striking distance. Mike’s luck in this game continued to hold as one of the 2 or 3 Action cards in his hand was exactly what he needed to keep Owen and I from attacking Mecatol Rex. But I needed to attack Mike this round because it would earn me a victory point from my preliminary secret object. (You get a preliminary secret objective at the beginning of the game. Once you complete that you get your real secret objective.) I sent a single cruiser again his race’s super battlercruise and two destroyers. I missed on the first round, but so did Mike. (Apparently viruses are lousy shots.) I tried to retreat, but that was too costly. Mike eventually destroyed my cruiser, but I got my victory point.

We ended the night’s fun at 9:00 after the end of the third turn.

I think everyone would agree that during the entire game I played awful. I screwed up the strategy cards I was given and I missed obvious opportunities. I’m hoping that next week is better.

I don’t recall everyone’s victory point level when we ended. Maybe one of the guys can note that in the comments.

Chaos Steve

 

Egizia & Kachina

Tonight we’re going to start playing a two-part Twilight Imperium game using the expansions. Because of this, I thought I should get last week’s game in here for the record books.

Once again we tried out Egizia. We liked the game the first time we played it. But now with one game under our belts, we wanted to try out our new strategies. Whatever strategy Mike was using, it was working. Throughout the entire game he had a very solid building force with lots of food, stone, and builders. We all we pretty sure he was going to win; all except Ben. Ben held out hope that he might pull off a victory. That’s not to say Owen and I were doing horrible in the game—we weren’t. We just didn’t seem to have the resources the other two guys had accumulated. The game ended in a titanic struggle for either Mike or Ben to win it all. After numerous recounts, lawsuits, and general unrest, Ben was declared the winner by one point. Ben had 138 points, while Mike had 137 points. I ended up with a respectable 129 points, with Owen one point behind me at 128.

Egizia is a fun game that plays quickly. Even for a bunch of “Turn Angst” players like my group.

We still had time for a short game and chose Kachina. Kachina is one of Mike’s favorite games and the rest of us like it too. It’s another game where “Turn Angst” can get you as you struggle to get the most points out of every play. Mike seems uncanny in his ability to score big points no one else sees.

For a while Mike and I were neck and neck, with Mike always taking the lead. I feel behind towards the end of the game and Ben replaced me as Mike’s main contender. Owen was just struggling to stay up with us for most of the game. But as usual, Owen’s big point surge came near the end of the game.

Mike did win with 70 points. Ben had 65 points. Owen had a surprising 64 points and I came in fourth (not last) with 59 points.

Chaos Steve

Egizia

This week we tried a game that has been sitting in my ThoughtHammer.com wish list for months: Egizia. In Egizia the players are builders constructing the famous monuments of Egypt. Each player manages three main resources: food, bricks, and laborers. There are also three main building areas on the board: the Sphinx, the obelisk and graves, and the great pyramid and temple. The game only lasts five turns, but each turn is busy with the players gathering resources, increasing their laborers, and finally building. One interesting dynamic of the game is how you gather resources and set your plans for building. You have eight ships that you place along the Nile at various points. Each of these points either grants you a special card and/or grants you a special ability. The twist is that once you place a ship, your next ship must always be downstream of your previous ship.

We began our game and it was obvious that none of us knew exactly what we should be doing. Building at the Sphinx earns you a few victory points and grants you cards that earn you bigger points at the end of the game under certain conditions. So not only do you need to earn points during each turn, you have to be mindful of what points you can earn at the game’s end. When the game was over we decided that the Sphinx cards are very important to winning the game…as Ben and Owen showed us by their point scores.

We liked the game and want to try it again now that we have an idea how everything works. Ben won our game with 105 points. Owen was a close second with 100 points. I was a distant third with 87 points and Mike the Builder came in last with 79 points.

Chaos Steve

Thunderstone

“Thunder, Thunder, Thunderstone!” This week we played Thunderstone—a fantasy-deck building game so close to the Dominion game that there should be lawsuits. But we don’t care about that. We only care if the game is fun…and it is.  My friend Bob loaned me Thunderstone about six months ago and we just now got around to playing it. (This is mostly because I have to give it back to Bob this weekend. We should have played it sooner!)

As I mentioned, the game mechanics are very similar to Dominion. The difference is that in Thunderstone you are building a deck of heroes to venture into a dark dungeon, destroy horrible monsters, and come out again with the fabulous prize—the thunderstone. The heroes can be equipped with various items such as weapons, spells, and food. Besides the thunderstone, the other prizes in the dungeon are the monsters themselves. Killing monsters is the main way to garner victory points. When you kill a monster You also get experience points (XP) and it gets added to your deck. You can use XPs to level up your heroes so they can become more powerful.  Many monsters, once they are in your deck, add special abilities or gold that you can use later. When you’re not killing monsters in the dungeon, you are going to town to buy more cards to add to your deck. These cards represent the weapons, spells, and food I mentioned earlier, but can also be heroes and various town folk that have abilities to help your heroes.

Let there be light! Light is very important in Thunderstone.  The entrance to the dungeon is filled with three visible monsters, ranked 1 through 3 by its position next to the monster/dungeon deck. The higher the rank, the deeper the monster is in the dungeon and heavier the light penalty is. This penalty translates into negate attack values for your heroes. To overcome this darkness, the heroes can possess various light sources ranging from torches to fireballs. (Yeah, fireballs!)

So what did we think of the game? We liked it…probably a little better than Dominion because you get to fight things! That is, we liked the overall theme of Thunderstone better than Dominion. Ben had played Thunderstone before, possibly hundreds of times. Still, he knew the rules just as well as those of us that had never played before. We like Ben. Still that didn’t keep Ben from winning the first game. He had 30 points. Mike was close with 28 points. (Note: Mike may have actually beaten Ben, but Mike didn’t realize there were victory points on some heroes as well as monsters. Mike only looked at his monsters.) Owen and I were pathetic with 11 and 12 points respectively.

With one game under our belts we re-randomized the village, heroes, and monsters and played again. This time things turned out quite different. (Ok, not really that different.) Mike won with 28 points. (Mike was a monster killing machine.) Ben was second with just 18 points. Owen had 14 points and I had 13 points. But this time, Owen and I were not pathetic.

Chaos Steve

 

Ticket to Ride

I’m late. It’s almost time to play this week’s game and here I am just getting around to telling you about last week’s game. Last week we played a couple of games of Ticket to Ride. I think this is one of the best family games on the market. We played using the 1910 expansion which adds extra routes and an extra bonus point card for the player who completes the most destination tickets. I would highly suggest you get this expansion if you own Ticket to Ride. Besides the extra cards, it also comes with a complete set of train cards that are larger and easier to handle.

We played two games. In both games Owen was playing on a completely different level than the rest of us. He kicked our butts and took names in the process. In the first game he ended with 150 points. Mike came in second with 110 points. Ben and I tied for third place with 100 points each. Ben won the tiebreaker, so he came in third place. Never mind about my placement.

Mike had mentioned earlier to us that he has been playing a lot of Ticket to Ride on his PC or iPad (I forget which.) This seemed to actually hurt him because he had become so used to the program marking his destinations and displaying completed ones so he could focus on the uncompleted ones. This caused him to miss a couple of destinations that he thought he had completed, but really hadn’t.

In the last game Own did even better with a final score of 170. I barely grabbed second place with 133 points. Ben was right behind me with 130 points. Mike had a dismal 72 points. I had made several stupid mistakes during this game and I realized that even if I had played the game perfectly, I still wouldn’t have come close to Owen’s score. Well done Owen.

Chaos Steve

7 Wonders

We played 7 Wonders again this week. 7 Wonders is primarily a card game, but plays like a board game. Each player receives a board showing their civilization and what is need to build their particular wonder. Along the way you play cards that represent materials and buildings. Some cards take effect immediate, while others become important later in the game. Many cards give you benefits throughout the game. One important thing to note about the game is that after you choose a card to play, you pass the remaining deck to another player. This means that not only are you looking to play good cards for yourself, but also may want to keep cards that might otherwise help your opponents.

We played four games in about three hours. In the first game I became kingmaker. This is, thanks to something I did, I helped Owen win the game. What I did was pass him a card at the end of the game that garnered him a few victory points and a few gold. This became very important when at the end of the game he and Mike were tied for the win at 48 points. The tiebreaker is gold. Owen had two more gold pieces than Mike. I came in third with 43 and Ben was last with 42 points.

I crushed them in the second game with 55 points. Owen, in second place, had 47 points. Mike had 46 and Ben came in last with 42 points—just like last game. We mentioned to Ben that it is unlikely that he will win unless he gets more than 42 points. He listened to us in the third game.

In the third game, first, second, and third places were decided by a single point. Ben, taking our advice, got 56 points and came in first. I was second with 55 points and Owen was third with 54 points. Mike got a dismal 47 points and came in dead last. But Mike learned a few things that he decided to put into play during the next game. His new strategy worked out very well for him.

In our last game it was obvious that Owen was going for straight victory points. By that I mean playing building cards that granted him no other benefit other than providing straight victory points. Mike was after artifacts. Artifact victory points can go up almost exponentially. The key is to get a lot of the right types of artifacts. Mike did this exceptionally well. (I blame Owen for not watching him more closely.)  MIKE CRUSHED US getting the highest game total ever; beating out any previous high total by close to 20 points! Mike made up for all of his previous poor showings by getting an amazing 75 points! Ben (surprisingly) came in second with 52 points. Owen had 51 points and I had an embarrassing 41 points. (Let’s not mention how Mike nearly doubled my points.)

I had seven pages of charts and diagrams showing the various statistical data from our games. I would have loved to have upload them, but Mike still hasn’t figured out why we can no longer upload images. Oh well you’ll just have to imagine just how cool they were.

Chaos Steve

Sum of
Score		 Game
Player Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Game 4 Grand Total
Ben 42 42 56 52 192
Mike 48 46 47 75 216
Owen 48.2 47 54 51 200.2
Steve 43 55 55 41 194
Grand Total 181.2 190 212 219 802.2

 

Average
of Score
Player Total
Ben 48
Mike 54
Owen 50.05
Steve 48.5
Grand Total 50.1375

 

 

 

 

Colonia

Owen picked up a game called Colonia during the last few moments of this year’s Gen Con. He got this $65 game for $15. (BTW, there is a deluxe version that sells for $99.)  Colonia comes in a big box with lots of gaming bits inside. The bits are all high quality card stock and wood. The board is good size and fits together much like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The game itself follows the familiar concept of buying raw materials, using the raw materials to produce goods, shipping those goods to earn money, and then using the money to buy artifacts. It’s the artifacts that give you your victory points and he with the most victory points at the end of the game wins. The game is played over six weeks, each week having seven days and each day has it’s on task to be done. Each player also has a limited number of family members (38) that can be assigned to tasks on each day during the week. Managing your family is essential, as we will see later.

The game also uses four different currencies: Pound Sterling, Grivna, Mark, and Gulden. All of the artifacts fall into the same four currency categories. You can only buy an artifact with its matching currency.

Colonia has a few fun game mechanics. Everyone has bid cards with the values of 3 through 8 on them. Each turn the players select a bid card to signify their turn order during the coming week. You can only use a specific card once during the game. You also have to dedicate the same number of family members as the number on the card. If you don’t have enough family members, you card number is 0 and you do not vote on any special occurrences during the days of that week. During each day of the week you assign your family members to their various tasks. It’s after you do this for a day that you get back the family members you assigned last week. So, as I said earlier, managing your family is critical.

Our game ran about three hours. Normal playing time is 120 minutes, but you end up spending a lot of time deliberating over how to manage your family. We liked the game. The rules are easy, but there is a lot of strategy in what you do during each day of the week that finally earns you that much needed money. Going first is good. You get first choice during each of the day’s tasks.

So what happened during our game? The game seemed to run pretty smoothly for everyone. Some weeks you did well and some weeks you faltered. Shipping goods became paramount. Only one player can fill a cargo hold with goods, so any other players who had those goods were left keeping goods they would have rather shipped. On the fifth week, I ran out of family members during turn order selection. That meant I was going last. It wasn’t a good week for me at all, but on the up side I had lots of family members for the last week—the week where all of the ships in the harbor would pay off with money. Through no planning on my own, I got to go first. This happened because both Mike and Ben didn’t have enough family members left to cover their turn order card, so they went last. Owen and I tied, but since I was after him on the previous turn, I got to go before him on this turn. This simple turn of the events gave me a huge boost–just what I needed to win the game. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought Ben was going to win. At the end of the game I had 24 points which was enough to win. Owen had 19 points. Ben had 18 and Mike came in last with 14.

Over the years me winning the first time we play a game has come to be known as “The First Game Syndrome.” I think Ben, Owen, and Mike did this to ease the shame of losing to me. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but then I’m playing against the best. But they are just a few guys you kno… I said they are the best!

Chaos Steve

Dominion

This week we played Dominion; an expandable card game where each player is trying to increase his dominion over his surroundings thus gaining victory points. This game has been around for a while and has a plethora of expansions. We played with the base set. It comes with 500 cards, but you don’t use them all at one time in the game. For each game, you decide which cards to play with. One interesting aspect of the game is that the victory point cards actually are a hindrance during game play. Each turn you start with only five cards to play. If any of those are victory point cards, they are useless and take up a spot where a more valuable card could have been.

The games go pretty quick and we were able to get four games done in three hours. Ben had played Dominion before with some other gaming friends, so he was very familiar with the game. He offered a lot of suggestions and comments during the games. We mostly ignored him, but occasionally he was right on the money. Mike quickly became the action card king and he played numerous combos that allowed him to play card after card. Owen had big trouble in a least two games. In one game his number of coins (used to buy other cards) was low, so he couldn’t buy victory points like the rest of us. The most wanted victory point card cost eight coins. Owen quickly became known for being able to get seven coins—always one short. In a later game he just fell on hard times and his cards where not kind to him. Even with all these problems he was last only once.

Here are the scores from the games:

Game 1: Ben 38, Steve 34, Mike 32, Owen 22
Game 2: Mike 25, Owen 24, Ben 22, Steve 22
Game 3: Steve 34, Ben 31, Owen 28, Mike 24
Game 4: Ben 36, Owen 33, Steve 28, Mike 28

Poor Owen was second twice, but couldn’t quite pull out a win.

Next time we’ll have to mix in some cards from the expansion sets and see how it goes.

Chaos Steve

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game

This last weekend Wayne Grelle (Inferno on the PEG forums) invited us over to his house to play Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game. As the name implies, it’s a game of cliffhanger movie pulp action as the players (as adventurers) race around the board uncovering ancient artifacts to gain fortune and glory. Along the way each adventurer encounters dangers that, if they overcome them, also grant them glory. The dangers are overcome by making tests against the adventurer’s skills. If you fail at overcoming a danger, you flip the danger card over to the “cliffhanger” side. This is where the adventurer stays until his next turn when he tries to overcome the cliffhanger. The Glory gained from dangers is used as currency to buy gear and allies. There are also event cards in the game that help the adventurer along the way. The easiest way to get these is if you roll a ‘1’ during the initiative or movement phase. The adventurer that reaches 15 Fortune and gets to his home city first, wins the game.

Wayne’s family (Michelle, his wife; Nick, his son; and Bea, Nick’s girlfriend) had already played the games many times. Mike and I were newbies. Fortunately the game is pretty easy to pick up and soon we were both globetrotting in search of artifacts. Each adventurer’s turn goes very fast and we quickly learned how important Event cards, Gear, and Allies are to overcome the various dangers encountered while artifact hunting. A few of the Event cards can be used to undermine the other adventurers as well. There’s nothing like having an adventurer (that is not you) turn in his artifact only to find out it’s a fake. This happened to me as I turned my only artifact of the game. Wayne hit me with an Event card that made it worthless. (Curse you Wayne!) Bea won the game and I ended up with not a single Fame point.

Then we played again. This game went completely different from the first game. Bea’s dice went stone cold and she struggled the entire game to overcome dangers and recover artifacts. Everyone else was doing their globetrotting best to gain Fortune and Glory. As the game drew to an end, Nick and Mike were neck-and-neck. Both had enough Fortune to win and both were sitting on their home city at the end of the turn. It turned out that Nick had one more Fortune that Mike and that was enough to win the game.

A couple of other things to mention about this game is that is has both a competitive and cooperative game mode. You can also play teams in the competitive mode. Eight total players can play which makes the game great for large groups.

Chaos Steve

World Without End & Back to the Future Card Game

This week we played Ken Follett’s World Without End. It’s the follow up to his Pillars of the Earth game. World Without End is a resource managing game played over four chapters each with 6 game rounds.  At the end of each chapter you must pay a certain number of resources: two food, two piety markers, and from 2-5 pieces of gold. With that in mind you also want to gain victory points. You do this by supplying building materials to various construction projects and by helping the victims of the McNeal plague. The beginning of each round also has an event that must resolved and gives everyone the opportunity to gather more income or resources. There is a dazzling array of high quality bits that come with the game. We like bits.

The game box says the game should run about 90 minutes. Ours ran about two hours. One interesting dynamic of the game is how you choose your action each round. You have 12 actions to choose from and each round you must choose one to preform and one to discard—meaning you won’t be able to do the discarded action even if you want to later. This happened to all of us in the last chapter of the game. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

For most of the game, Owen and I led, while Ben and Mike lagged behind a bit–Mike lagged a little further back than Ben. This changed as we came down to the final chapter. Ben moved up to challenge Owen and I for the lead, while Mike moved up into our same scoring zip code. As the game ended Owen was able to hold on to the lead with 58 points, I came in second with 55 points. Ben was nipping at my heels with 53 points and Mike turned in a respectable 48 points.

Next we played the Back to the Future card game by Looney Labs. In the game you play one of the descendants of one of the characters from the movie. Someone is messing with history again and you need to stop them before you are wiped out of existence. The “someone” is all of the other players. In the game you get an ID card stating who you are and what the timeline should look like for you to win. After you get the timeline looking like it should, you’re last act is to go back and un-invent time travelling.

The timeline (rows of cards) include linchpin cards and ripple points. Linchpins are significant moments in time that affect the ripple points associated with it. By changing the linchpin (flipping the card) the ripple point cards associated with it flip also. The game is filled with all kinds of cards allowing you to travel back in time to change these linchpins—maybe too many cards. The game is supposed to run from 20-60 minutes. Ours went 90 minutes and we were glad when it finally ended. Not so much because the game wasn’t fun, but because over and over again you would get close to you goal only to have some other time traveling nincompoop (another player) ruin it for you.

Next week is the finale of the Pirates game that Ben has been running for us.

Chaos Steve