February Game Log

Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper

SOG: Started the night a game of Bluff. Don seems to get the difficult decisions each turn.
Chris, Chip, Don, Vitas, Me, Mark

Great Brain Robbery

SOG: A brain game by cheapass. Zombies looking for brains on a train. When the train stops the player using the best brain wins. This 20-minute game took 40 minutes to play.
Chip (10), Chris , Don, Vitas, Me, Mark with no brains

Capitol

SOG: We played Capitol and the other half were playing Cities and Knights. New to Chip, Chris and Marcus. Explained the rules and I started the game.
Chip and I (39), Marcus (36), Chris (27)

SOG: Marcus and Chip left, the others were still playing C&K. Taught Chris MR1 while we waited for the other group to finish. Chris won after three hands.
Chris (113), Me (90)

4th

Purchase:Taj Mahal ($32)

Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper

SOG: Went to Uno's for lunch and played three hands. Craig and I both played Ripper Escape cards. First time I've seen it happen back to back.
Craig (76), Me (66), Holly (30)

5th

Al's: Steve finally joins us for some games. We decided to introduce him to some of the classics. I was able to win big during the third hand for the victory.
Me (25), Al (20), Steve (19), Maria (17)

Abduction

Al's: The hold was next to two Armories and the teleporter. Once the exit was place it was move to the teleporter, use the teleporter and move to the exit. After many tries, Dimitri was able to sneak out. Steve did not like this game.
Dimitri

Al's: Used Maria's hand made version of the game. Steve picked up the game quickly but lost the last challenge to Al.
Al, Steve, Roberto, Maria, Me, Dimitri

Robo Rally

Al's: Steve had heard plenty about Robo Rally Rally from Dave, so we game him some first hand experience. It was a simple two tile, three flag race with a 6-point shield on the last flag. Al, Maria and I were still virtual robots during the second turn, which helped in getting the lead. I was able to beat Maria to the last flag by one space.
Me

Carcassonne

Al's: The closer for the night was Carcassonne. Al started heavy into farming. He would have won but didn't see Maria place a critical tile that merged her large meadow into one of his. Dimitri was playing hoser, he screwed Roberto's cities with the Cathedrals and enclosed my uber-meeple into a tiny farm.
Maria (87), Me (76), Al(66), Roberto (59), Dimitri (57), Steve (54)

6th

Merchants of Venus

MVGA: I've owned this game for over 20 years and this was my first play. I did some lucky picks up and discoveries, which allowed me to upgrade to a freighter early in the game. Mike spent over 5 turns in the Space Clouds trying to get his destination but could never roll his pilot number to get the correct path. I won by selling designer genes at a high demand site. Walter had 1200 bucks deeds, Mike had about 800 and I only had 300. I was heaving in cash.
Me (2100), Walter (1500), Mike (1000)

150

Puerto Rico

MVGA: Played with new buildings.

1	2	3	4
Aqueduct	Hospice	Factory	Cloister
Forest House	Office	Specialty Factory	Fortress
Black Market	Church	Harbor	City Hall
Sm Warehouse	Lg Warehouse	Union Hall	GuildHall
			Customhouse

I found that the Aqueduct/ Specialty Factory to work nicely. Mike picked up the Church early, which earn him plenty of points. Walter was using the black market quite nicely.
Mike (55), Me (48), Walter (36)

7th

Lunch Time: This was Scott's first game of Wyatt Earp. Craig and Scott score huge in the firsts hand. After two hands I only had 5 points but I was able to dominate the last hand by the use of multiple hideouts for the win.
Me (25), Craig (18), Scott (17), Dimtir (12)

Puerto Rico

B20: Staring order: Campbell, Me, Matt, Adam
This was a lite night at B20. We got a 4-player game of PR going. I started out quickly, grabbing an indigo plant and tobacco storage early. I made money, bought the factory, ala Kyle doctrine. After that, I fell apart. I had all five items but the drain on colonist was great, which was the caused the end of game.
Matt (46), Adam (41), Campbell (41), Me (30)

La Citta

B20: More people show up, we lost Matt to Abenteuer Menschheit. My third play. We used the basic setup. My initial turn was to build two quarries for money production, which was a good move. During the second turn Scott and Adam both built additional cities. I contemplated and following copying their strategy but choose to concentrate on my city development. One of my cities became a monster, gobbling up citizen from neighboring towns every city. Seeing that this was good, I built more farms and used "Poll the People" to provide the proper enhancements to my city. Nearly lost because I forgot about the end game bonus.
Me (35), Scott (32), Adam (30)

Modern Zieten

B20: Second play for this game. Quick and easy stock market game set in the 1920's. Feels like this game is missing something.
Mike L (14),Me and Scott (10), Mike G (32)

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

B20: Last game of the night. Campbell got a nice early lead but falter in the third round. I had a huge third round but not enough to beat Kyle
Kyle (1820), Me (1730), Campbell (1360), Mike L (960)

8th

Battleline

SOW: Got to SOW and only Constantine and Alison were there. Karl showed up so we played a couple of quick games of battle line. This game you have six color suits range in value from 1 to 10. There are 9 battle sites which players can play cards on. Each turn a player plays a card and draws a card. The player that gets the strongest three-card hand wins the battle. Straight Flush (strongest), Three of a Kind, Straight, Flush, highest total value (weakest). A player wins the game by winning at five sites or win three adjacent sites.
I got my butt handed to me.
game 1: Karl 5 Me 1
game 2: Karl 5 Me 0

SOW: Mike show up to rescue me from experiencing another loss at Battleline. Karl got off to a early lead I caught up near the end game. Everybody had two huts on one massive river network that was valued 29 points. I jumped on to several meadows during the end game while Karl ignored them. It was the winning difference.
Me (164), Karl (156), Mike (121)

SOW: Play five hands of Wyatt while we waited for the others to finish their H&G game.
Karl (36), Mike and I (31)

SOW: If you have six players and 15 minutes, bluff is the game. Got knocked out on two bad calls. Damn the skewed probabilities.
Constantine, Karl, Dan, Mike, Me, Dan Jr

SOW: Final game of the night was a game of C&K. Karl and Mike had never played C&K. Skewed probabilities were in effect here too. 5 and 9 were rolled more consistently than 6 and 8s. Hell twos were rolled three times within four rolls. Mike and I lost our cities. Mike was able to rebuild while I was not. Constantine was home free midway thru the game. He had two metros, a defender of Catan point and the merchant at the time of his victory.
Constantine (13), Me (8), Karl (5), Mike (4)

120

9th

Silverton

Chris's: Went over to Chris house for an afternoon game. Chris and I started in Denver and Josh started in El Paso. The initial mine claims were in the SLC and Leadville areas, making Josh life a little tough. Josh was forced to construct line to several cities to pick up passenger lines. I made my way to Pueblo to an easy passenger line. Chris concentrated on going to Leadville and picking up whatever passenger lines were there. I made my way to Silverton and Santa Fe. By the mid game the price of copper was skyrocketing and only one copper mine was available, in the south. Sadly for Josh it only produced two coppers before getting depleted. Heavy production of silver and coal kept prices down. Chris finished the game by surpassing the 6000-dollar mark at the end of the 3rd year. We decided to continue playing in the hope that someone would reach 10000 but the game was called 45 minutes later.
Chris (6185)/7195
Ralph - (5195)/5795
Josh - (4690)/7860

120

11th

Online: Played "One Knight Stand" scenario, downloaded from a wancatan site. Lloyd got off to a nice lead by hosing Helen and I at the forest (6) hex with the robber. Sixes rolled a plenty during this time. He was able to get two metros and was pretty close to winning the game. Helen made a great effort to defeat Lloyd; she took longest road from me and was able to take one of the metros from Lloyd. She also was able to colonize two islands for some great numbers (6 & 8s). Lloyd finally prevailed by take the trader from me and upgraded several settlements.
Lloyd (16), Helen (14), Me (11)

120

13th

MVGA: Played a game of Ra while we waited for more to show up. Rich would always get the early auctions and finished by the middle of an Epoch. Dan and I would consistently pull more Ra tiles to end each Epoch.
Rich (74), Me (47), Dan (34)

San Marco

MVGA: Interesting mechanic, "I pick, you choose." My first. This game is comprised of a board with six regions separated by rivers. Each player will start with 8 cube (randomly distributed) and some bridges (player's choice) on the board. The Action deck is comprised of region card (6 types, place one cube on that region), bridge cards (place a bridge), Exchange (replace one cube with yours), Banish (pick a region and remove d6 cubes), Doge (move the Doge to a region and score it). The limit deck had cards numbered 1 thru 3. During each turn the first play draws six cards from the action deck and 4 cards from the limit deck to make piles of Action and Limit card. After the first player finishes making the pile the next player choose a pile and performs the actions. The next takes his followed by the first player. The round continues until a player reach or passes 10 limit points. There are three rounds in the game with a final scoring round at the end of the game.
Rich (100), Dan (81), Me (62)

Settlers of Catan

MVGA: Dan got off to a horrible start getting nothing for the first couple of turns. Rich and I did well during that time and quickly expanded to 4 settlements. I snagged the longest road and a fifth settlement securing every number except 10 and 8s. I was one knight away from getting largest army too. Then draught began, 10, 7 and 8s roll consistently with a few 2 and 12. I stalled; Dan started a charge with Sheep monopoly strategy and almost took longest road from me. For the win Rich took my longest road and also picked up the largest army.
Rich (10), Dan (6), Me (5)

14th

Purchase:San Marco ($27) and The Bucket King ($13)

Showmanager

B20: I remembered on the way over that it was Valentine's Day, so I didn't expect anyone to be there. Campbell was about to leave when I arrived followed a few minutes later by Scott. We had just started playing Wyatt Earp when Joe and Brain show up. So we scrapped Wyatt Earp and pulled out Showmanager. Campbell flushed early and often, eventually running out of money and had to put on some really bad shows. My first show (Queenie) was tapped for money. I was able to produce a high quality Ballet but I had to borrow one dollar to finish my Wolf. Scott produced a Ballet at 47, which pushed me to 2nd place for Ballet.
Brian (48), Scott (46), Joe (38), Me (35), Campbell (17)

Wizard

B20: Taj was requested but Rich and Kyle were playing San Marco, so we decided to kill sometime with Wizard. I did my typical strong start by getting every trick in the first five rounds but this time I didn't fall apart. I was almost perfect, missing only one bid. Stopped after the 10th round because of my lead and the clammer for Taj!!
Me (320), Campbell (160), Scott (140), Joe (110), Brian (100)

Taj Mahal

B20: Finally broke in my copy of Taj Mahal. My initial hand was a rainbow so I had to fold to pick up extra cards. Joe got out to quick lead by getting the +2VP card for several turns. Terry went the territory route, Kyle and Rich were building links. I was able to link several territories for some good points but not consistently enough to score big.
Terry (50), Kyle (44), Rich (41), Me (34), Joe (27)

B20: Joe and Mike got off to a blazing start by getting into the teens while Rich and I got less then five. I made a 3 rd round comeback that shot me up to second but Joe was able to get enough to end the game.
Joe (25), Me and Mike (19), Rich (17)

14th

King's Gate

SOW: This was Constantine and Rob's first game. They caught on pretty quick since they have both play Samurai. I picked up the first two locations getting the emperor and the bishop chips. I never used the emperor but I used the bishop to win location nine, which allowed me to play location 10 in an area dominated by my tiles.
Me (21), Karl (20), Constantine (19), Rob (17)

Carolus Magnus

SOW: Karl had recently bought this game and it is one that I've been trying to play for a while. Simple game. Each turn, players use their bid chips to bid for turn order. The player with the lowest value goes first. Each turn, a player places 4 of their seven cubes. If you have the most cubes of color you control that color. After placement, the player moves the emperor up to their bid value. The area the emperor land on does a check. Whoever controls the most cubes gets to build a tower in that area. If two adjacent areas have the same color towers they are merged into one area. The player then rolls four dice to restock their cubes. The game ends when there are less than 4 areas or a player has all towers out.
Me (8), Karl (4), Mike (3)

Battle Cry

SOW: I've always have wanted to play this game so I was able to convince Mike to give it a try. We fumble through a couple of rules but it was pretty easy to learn. The map is 9 x 12 hex map with tiles for features like hills, building, stream, etc. Each player has a nice set of plastic figures of infantry, cavalry, cannons and generals. Units comprise of a flagged unit plus some additional units. The unit is destroyed with the flagged unit is killed. Combat is pretty simple; roll a number of dice equal to unit attack strength minus the range. Objective for each scenario is to capture six flags of the enemy.
Bull Run I was the confederate. The Union made a dash for the hills but the Confederate got there first and slaughtered the Union infantries. Me (6), Mike (2)

Pea Ridge I was the Union this time. The Confederates attacked the Union held ridge and were repelled. It was looking good for the Union but their weakness was the middle which the Confederates did an excellent job of assaulting.
Mike (6), Me (4)

Lost Cities

SOW: A few minutes left to the end of the night so I taught Mike the game. Played two hands.
Me (158), Mike (60)

18th

Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper

Online: Standard scenario. Helen got out to a quick lead by getting the Military Metro. John mid-way thru the game was able to take it away. I had the longest road but my path was cut off my John and Helen. Helen won it by building up cities and getting the Ore Port. She snagged my longest road, the merchant and built another metro.
Helen (13), John (10), James (9), Me (8)

105

19th

Lunch Time: We went to Tweedy's for lunch. We managed to get two hands in.
Craig (56), Holly (41), Dimtri (22), Me (21)

20th

Lunch Time: Played three hands of Money. Craig is becoming a shark with card games.
Craig (600+730+540=1870), Dimitri (560+480+280=1320), Me (580+270+390=1240)

Nuclear War

Al's: Al broke out an old game from college days. He had a lot of the expansions so it could handle a lot of players. Rich lost all of his population due to propaganda. The game progressed for a little more before we quit over a rules tiff.
Al, Maria, Tofu, Dave, Me, Steve, Chris, Rich

Al's: Pulled out the dice for a game of bluff. The large number of dice on the table led to some weird results. It wasn't unusual for a player to get knocked out after once bad call.
Game 1: Rich
Game 2: Al
Game 3: Maria

Al's: Part of the crew was off to play Xbox. First play for all off us. An interesting game were the formation of you pyramid will determine how long you can last in the game. Al and Maria enjoyed enough to play twice.
Game 1: Dave (4), Al(2), Maria(1), Me, Chris
Game 2: Maria (4), Al (3), Dave (2), Me, Chris

Al's: Played a hand of Money, mainly to teach Dave the game.
Maria (610), Me (600), Dave (590), Al (520)

21th

Purchase:6 Nimmt! ($11) ) finally arrived after being in limbo for two months.

Ilise's: Growth was slow in this game since ore was rare. John had two points on defenders of Catan and Ilise had a metro. I got longest road and built lots of settlement/cities.
Me (13), John (9), Ilise(9)

Ilise's: Ilise and John wanted revenge. This time brick was the rare resource. Ilise was not getting the rolls, again and was not having a good time. Ilise was able to get the longest road but other than that didn't grow well. John had three points as defender of Catan. I was able to get level 3 on trading and started trading 2-1 commodities. I was able to get two metros for the win.
Me (14), John (12), Ilise(11)

6 Nimmt!

Ilise's: First play for Ilise and John. Played five hands before I broke the 66-point end game condition. John liked the game.
John (53), Ilise(61),Me (77)

Ilise's: First play for Ilise and John. Ilise liked the game better than 6 Nimmt!
Ilise(6), John (4),Me (0)

22nd

Modern Zieten

Totalcon: Got to Totalcon around eight but didn't find anyone I recognized. I went to eat breakfast in Mansfield. When I returned, I bumped into Phil and some of the GSG gang. I joined them for a game. The first round had 6 cards up for bid so I did a max bid. It guaranteed that I wouldn't win any bids during the game but I had a nice set of cards. Phil had control of New York. He was looking good for London and was starting to dominate the game. Seeing that the game was basically over I choose to end the game instead of letting him score even more points.
Phil (12), Me (9), Bob (7), Craig B and Mark(6)

Zirkus Flohcati

Totalcon: English translation Flea Circus. A press your luck card game were the main objective is to get one of each color (10 suits). Three of kind is worth 10 points. The card illustrations are cute but I found the game a little boring.
James (55), Me (47), Mark (44), Phil (31), Bob (27)

Bang!

Totalcon: Chaotic guess who game. Phil was the known element, the sheriff. Everyone else was an outlaw, a deputy or a renegade. Mark started out early by shooting at the sheriff and was quickly put in jail. I stayed in the background doing a hurt everyone strategy. James was placed in Jail and quickly became a target. James was taken out and he turned out to be the deputy. After that it was open season on the sheriff. The sheriff was taken out and the outlaws won.
Outlaws (Me, Mark, Craig), Renegade (Bob), Sherif (Phil), Deputy (James)

Totalcon: Played a game of Ra as a practice game for several people. I got some lucky draws at the end of the first round for lead in pharaohs, which I kept through out the game. I the final round I took an earthquake tile so I could get all five cultures. Sadly, I had the least total of Sun chips so I had to lose 5 points to James, which turned out to be the difference.
James (42), Me (41), Mark (31), Phil (23)

Totalcon: Played a filler game before the tournament started. Bob had three strong hands, getting at least one full set each hand.
Bob (1570), Me (1320), Mark (1210), Phil (1120), James (1060)

Adel Verpflichtet

Totalcon: First game of the tournament. This is a race game using a Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanism for actions. Pitt got out to an early lead. I was able to catch up by using my detective at the right times. Pitt got to the final stretch. I had the second best showing which allowed me get into a tie with second place but lost the tie breaker to Dave.
Pitt, Dave B, Me, Craig, Mark

Web Of Power

Totalcon: 2nd game of the tournament. Pitt had the unlucky experience of having to open 6 different countries. He was not very happy about this. Scott on the other hand was taking advantage of it. He got lucky and was able to place an advisor in every opening. He as a result scored huge number of points via his advisors.
Scott (63), Dave B (36), Pitt (28), Me (27), Eric (23)

Totalcon: 3rd game of the tournament. Once again Dave and Pitt were in this game, like bad fleas!!! The game start off easy, several exact hits got people down to 3 or so dice. Eric and Pitt went out followed by Adam. I was down 2 dice to 1 against Dave but made two successful calls for the victory.
Me, Dave B, Adam, Pitt, Eric

Lost Cities

Totalcon: 4th game of the tournament. I couldn't find anyone to play MR1 for the 2-player requirement so I had to settle for Lost Cities. The first hand decided this game since my initial hand was heavy with investment and high cards. Campbell on the other hand had a strong first hand.
Campbell (127), Me (66)

Can't Stop

Totalcon: After dinner and an ice cream run, Constantine, Richard, Adam and I played a game of Can't Stop. I'm so used to play this on-line that it felt like this game took forever. Richard was able to roll several nines in a roll for the win.
Richard

Totalcon: First hand belonged to Greg which a nice score in the teens, while I was dead last with 5 points. The second hand was a little better for me since I used hideout on the lead suits so I could increase my take. The third hand was all mine and nearly doubled my score.
Me (29), Rob (21), Constantine (18), Greg (16)

Warp 6

Totalcon: Turns out Greg is a game designer himself. He played one of his abstract games called Warp 6. Pair of Dice
Greg

27th

MVGA: Walter, Eric and I started a game of Wyatt. Anton arrived as we finished the first hand, so we gave him 5 grand and started the second hand. We stopped playing after four hands since more people had arrived.
Walter (24), Me and Anton (23), Eric (21)

Atlantic Star

MVGA: We had six players ready to play Atlantic Star when Mike showed up so we split into two groups. The other group went off to play Settlers of N�rnberg. My initial picks led me to a mismatch of card that led me to create a yellow cruise worth 12 points which quickly became 2 points after draining for money. I produced a strong Red cruise but the column was locked out so I wasn't able to borrow from it. I was guaranteed first place in that column. I quickly produced decent scoring Blue but I had to borrow against it. My Green cruise was pretty weak and only got fifth place in that column.
Mike (58), Rich (47), Me (34), Anton (12)

Through the Desert

MVGA: Broke in Mike's copy of Through the Desert. Eric and Rich did a great job of partitioning large groups of hexes for bonus points, something that Mike and I did not do. Eric and Rich got two longest caravans bonus, Mike got one and I had none.
Eric (77), Rich (76), Mike and I (58)

Princes of Florence

MVGA: My initial card kind of forced me to go the builder way. Since the three buildings I had to build were large I need the ability to place the next to each other. I also got a prestige card that was worth 8 point if I had the least number of empty squares, which I had. The big mistake in the game was letting Eric get three jesters, which let him dominate the best works for most of the game.
Eric (68), Rich (61), Me (60), Mike (47)

28th

B20: Played the bucket game while we waited for people to show up. Initially, Dave was ignored while Adam and I beat up on Campbell. After seeing that Dave had a strong pyramid we proceed to smack Dave.
Campbell (5), Adam and Me (3), Dave

Meuterer

B20: Dave and I pushed Meuterer. We got Adam and Nick to play. This was the first play for all of us. We kind of fumbled through the rules a bit but once the turn sequence was down, the game progressed quickly. I had problems understanding the game's concept of item selling. I felt it was backwards. Other than that issue, the game was fun and I'm looking forward to owning it.
Dave (39), Nick and Adam (37), Me (28)

Cartagena

B20: The other groups were about � thru their games, so we decided to play a quick game. Starting order Dave, Me, Nick, Adam.
I was able to get two of my pirates to the boat quickly but I had two at the end of the tunnel, which really hurt. The game hinges on being part of the main cluster to make rapid advancement to the escape boat. Being separated from the group forces the player to use too many cards for movement.
Dave, Adam, Nick, Me

Traumfabrik

B20: Chris showed up with brownie in hand for my birthday. We went over to Scholar where he bought Kingdoms, which we would player later. Upon our returning, we jumped into a game of Traum. I got the lead in actors early and was able to keep it for about 2/3 of the game. It took several quarters for me to finish a movie but when it was done it was a 20-point comedy. The best comedy Award was coming my way but Chris was able to get a 21 pointer in the last round. Nick had the best Drama and best direction, while Adam had best Action and Worst Movie.
Campbell (79), Me (71), Nick (70), Scott (65), Chris (44)

Can't Stop

B20: It was getting late and Scott was up for one more, so we got the dice rolling. I found that playing cautious doesn't work against very aggressive players. Players pushed the initial rolls to try to lock out one of the middle numbers (6,7,8). Even through I was able to get close, someone's luck would hold out long enough to lock out the column.
Chris (3), Mike (2), Scott (2) and I (0)

B20: Again everyone else was in the middle of their games so we decided that a third session play of Ra was in order. My first round determined my strategy. I was able to get lots of monuments so I concentrated in getting monuments. I was able to get all eight types, one triple and 2 quad for huge points. I had the worst sun score (-5) and Nick had the best (+5), which turned out to be the winning point swing.
Nick (56), Me (48), Chris (39)

Battleline

B20: Chris had never played before and had wanted to play it. First game went like my previous games of battle line. Lost three adjacent flags by the effective use of tactic card. The second game was a little better for me. I used a couple of tactic cards to prevent some losses and got some lucky draws for straight flushes. I was able to get consecutive flags for victory.
Game 1: Chris 3-0
Game 2: Me 4 - 2