Rochester Gamers Community

So, in an effort to increase the front page content (and my participation), I'm creating a place to put the Wednesday Session reports so anyone who wants can review them.

This weeks session actually started last week for me, as I am working to coordinate how often to host between Chris, I and anyone else who would like to host. We had quite a bit of a break there for a bit, but we're back now and better than ever!!

Karl and I had been talking about games to play, and we both thought the other would have a couple of them. Turns out we had 5 players, as Chris, Joel, Craig and Karl all made it over for some gaming goodness.

This being the case, the game Karl brought, A Castle for all Seasons, was put on hold due to player capacity. Some time we'll get it out. It sounds pretty fun, kind of a role selection/resource management type game.

Looking for 5 player games we decided to give Alhambra a go. This one is often a late night finisher, but we got it going first off. Craig took an early lead thanks to a big wall and one of the higher point colors all to himself. After the second scoring it didn't look like anyone was going to catch him, but then he did something silly and listened to me. I recommended that he just buy any tile he could pay for exactly because each of them sped up the end of the game. He did that, and ended up losing to Chris and I, who tied, by a couple of points with those tiles still sitting on his card. I don't know if remodeling to include them would have made the move any better or not. Obviously it didn't work to his advantage this time, but I'm not sure it wasn't the right move anyhow.
I ended the game on my turn by buying a tile that couldn't be replaced, and when I took my free money I wasn't really paying attention. If I had, I would have noticed that Chris already had more green that I would end up with, so I should have chosen another color. Had I chosen Blue (and only a 4 at that) I would have won that auction, the tile that went with it, and the game. As it was we tied, so it wasn't a big deal, but I should have been paying better attention.

After that, we still had 5 and were looking at my collection to see what we had that would cover that many. There aren't as many as you'd think, and we ended up deciding on Agricola. This dropped us to 4, as Craig doesn't particularly like the farming and also had to work on setting up something on his laptop. Karl, Joel, Chris and I decided to use the K deck and play 4p.
I haven't played 4 player in quite awhile, and it is pretty different than 5. Chris managed to get a 3rd action into play on turn 3 via the Lover application, and had a monster food engine going with the Magician, which let him gain an extra food and grain when he took travelling players with his last action. Normally that space is pretty bad, but that made it good for him and bad for the rest of us, which ended up being big. Meanwhile, I was quietly building a nice little wooden homestead and expanded to 4 rooms on turn 4. Karl was planting wood, and Joel was plowing a lot. We fed our families and moved on to stage 2.
Then things got bad for me. I grew my family, and Karl had also used a minor improvement to grow his outside the hut. Joel was still on 2, and Chris had a 2 room hut with the lovechild. By the time the second harvest came around, I didn't have enough and had to beg for one food. I managed to secure the clay oven that would end up saving my hide in round 6 though. If Karl had chosen that one instead of the stone oven, my goose would have been cooked (or not, rather).
Round 3 through 6 played pretty fast. Chris still looked to be in the lead, although he ate a lot of grain one round and it seemed that would be important at the end. Karl got a lot of pastures and an animal engine going, and Joel was exploiting one of his cards that let him keep an animal in every room in his house. He bred more cattle than the rest of us did sheep I think. Somewhere along here I managed to renovate to stone and purchase the well with the same action. The space that allows reed, stone, and food is amazing in the 4 player game. I don't think we went a turn where it wasn't chosen, and almost never was it left for the last round of actions.
In the end, I got the 5th action on Turn 16 but by the time I got to act there were exactly zero points that I could earn with it. I ended up taking the game by 3 points thanks to the cards I purchased along the way, and despite my begging card. Chris and his monster food engine were next. Joel edged out Karl, and both of them suffered from a lack of a stone house and a smaller number of family members.
I continue to be impressed by the number of different card interactions that change the way you have to go about the game. I know a lot of people advocate for a draft so that each player has access to the 'best' cards, but I think its more fun to work only with what you have. If you lose a game or 2 because of it, then maybe you didn't maximize your strategy, or maybe you really did have bad cards. Then next game you'll get better ones and take it from there.

Karl had to head out, and since he had let us play Agricola without a fuss, I thought it only fitting that Craig choose the next game. He selected Vikings, which I still hadn't opened from my secret santa. I punched the game as Chris refreshed us on the rules. Nothing feels quite like punching out a new game. During the punch out, Chris informed us that there were some of the tiles that were for an expansion to the base game. Expansion, you say? Hmmm....I didn't know there was one or that it came with one. We didn't use it this time, but I'm confident it will see play.
Vikings has been reviewed on this site so I won't do that here, but its a fun tactical tile and money management game. You get one tile to start with , and then buy a tile and worker each turn. Money is paid every turn, Points are scored every other, and there is a large scoring at the end.
Craig really took us to task here. He quietly ended up building 5 of the fisherman, and being able to place them all. At the end of the final scoring her racked up 20 points on these pieces alone. His strategy paid off, as he ended up with a final score of 59, and the rest of us were clustered somewhere in the 40 range. I honestly don't know who was second, third, or fourth, but we were nowhere close. My board didn't really develop well due to poor planning, but I think we all needed to keep a closer eye on Craig to be able to prevent that from happening again. Next time one of the 3 of us plays, I predict there will not be too many fisherman passed over in the purchase phase.

I told the 3 guys to decide on the next game and they selected Dominion. We played 2 rounds of random card draw. The first round included the familiar village/smithy combo, moneylender, beauraucrat, council room, gardens, cellar, moat, remodel, and feast. We played through this pretty fast (naturally) and the game ended when Joel bought the last province. Chris and I ended up tied with 27 points, but we counted later and there should have been one more province in the deck (apparently my copy is missing one). That would have left Chris one more turn to purchase, and he would have won if that had happened.

Our second game included chapel, moat, village, workshop, laboratory, witch, remodel, beaureaucrat, militia, and one other card I can't remember. This game took much longer as there were no additional buy cards. We bought moats quickly and this kept people from buying the witch too often. The game ended when I bought the last village just to finish it, despite being able to afford a duchy I think. When we tallied the points, I had 20 (chapeling my estates away and getting cursed once, plus a duchy and 3 provinces), while Joel and Craig both had 19 (one curse more than me) and Chris had 18 (he was a province shy). It was a tighter game than I thought when I ended it. I don't coun't point cards, though I suppose that would help me the next time.

Chris decided to call it a night after this, but Joel and Craig stayed for one last game of Race for the Galaxy. I haven't picked up the expansion yet, but I am planning on it. We started out fairly standard. Joel was on new sparta, I was on epsilon eridani, and Craig was on Alpha Centauri. The game seemed to go a few rounds more than I usually see, which was fine by me, since I was just playing 6 cost developments wherever I could. I got really lucky here with a late game draw that slid right in and ended up netting me 9 points. The final tally had me beating Craig by 3. Joel was behind on both of us despite producing for 5 worlds on the second to last round. He just didn't have the consume powers to really pound the points on us.

It was a triumphant return to Wednesday night gaming this week, and I hope to see a lot more people out as we move along. I'm coming down to the wire with my gaming time in Rochester, so I want to make as many of them count as I can.