Friday, July 17th Game Night Session Report

Three is the minimum number of players for a lot of games, but not all games work well with 3. The 5 games we played Friday night, all of which were new to Ken and me, seemed to work very well with Michael, Ken, and I.

We started out with an appetizer in Sorry! Sliders. This is quick-playing manual dexterity game where you try to send pawns sliding toward the center scoring circles, or bump your opponents' pawns out of scoring position. A fun, light game that should be enjoyable with kids, but obviously not much of a brain-burner. Michael beat me on the tie-breaker on this one, with Ken coming in third.

Next, we started the main course of the evening with two more substantial games in Nottingham and The Bridges of Shangri-La. I can't remember which one we played first.

Nottingham is almost a Rummy variant where you're trying to collect sets of treasures and play them to win points. It was new to all of us and the meat of the game is deciding whether to keep the card you drew on your turn, or use its special action to take a card from your opponent in one of several different ways (randomly, peek & choose, reveal & choose, offer trade, or ambush on a later turn). The ambush mechanic is innovative and fun to spring, but I think the game was a little flat and while I'd be willing to play again, I'm guessing that most of the game would be explored after a few plays. It's from the designer of Agricola, Bohnanza, and LeHavre, so given that track record, I could be missing something. Michael ran away with this one by completing several goals, Ken followed him and I was wayyyyyy back in third.

Bridges of Shangri-La was the only randomless game we played that night, and was probably the biggest brain-burner. Players place and move tiles on a board that represents several villages. The tiles are either masters or students of different schools, and moving them from village to village or placing them on empty villages establishes them as either students or new masters. The player with the most masters on the board wins. I won this one by... well, i don't know. It was new to all of us and I think Michael forgot a key rule at one point that allowed me to spring a migration on him that closed off a big village he was planning to invade. That alone was probably a 6 point swing, and even more than that when you consider the multiple turns he spent setting up the migration. Ken kept a lot of his tiles clustered in one part of the board and appeared to be winning, but I think he got opportunity-choked at the end (which snuck up on him while he was preparing a migration). This one was fairly close but I can't remember the scores. I would love to play this game again.

For dessert we had Nexus Ops and Colossal Arena. I can't remember which one we played first.

Nexus Ops is a light war game about controlling a piece of an alien world that's centered around a Monolith. Players build and deploy different units, mine resources, get secret mission cards, and get one-shot special bonus cards that help with combat. Combat is based on dice and rolling hits, like Axis&Allies, but units follow a set order of firing and taking casualties, which changes things significantly. Points are gained by winning battles and completing missions, and the first player to 12 points wins. It's a great fit -- a light war game and a fairly short playing time, lots of dice rolling and some strategy. I really enjoyed it. Michael got the 12 points first, I think Ken had 9 and I was stuck at 5.

Colossal Arena is one of Knizia's earliest designs and has players bidding on which monsters they think will survive to the end of a great mythical cage-match. 8 monsters (of the 12 available) are selected at the start of the game, and after the strength of each has been determined (by players playing cards on them and activating their special abilities, each of which is different), the round ends and the weakest monster is killed. Play continues until only 3 monsters are left. Players place up to 5 bets the whole game, with bets played in earlier rounds having the biggest payoff at the end. This is a fun tense decision-making game that actually ended in a three-way tie, each of us with 9 points. Michael won the tie-breaker on this one. I would gladly play it again.

We wrapped up around 12:30 and I can honestly say out of the 5 games we played I would easily play any of them again.