Rochester Gamers Community

For this one I thought I’d incorporate the posts of the other 2 players that summed up their feelings, at least in part. I provide my perspective at the end.

Brian’s take on the night:

Nate, Wade, and I were the only 3 people, and were able to parlay the 4+ hours into 4 games.

Tigris & Euphrates
A great game. It should see more play. Wade was able to edge out a victory over Nate and I with his score of 18 vs. Nate's 6, and my 5. He hopped into Nate's early monument, and built one himself shortly thereafter and then didn't lose a conflict the entire game. This helped him come to a narrow victory.

Dominion
It was a chapel game, and therefore quick. Like all chapel games it typically comes down to who can chapel the fastest to setup the finishing deck sooner. I took a flier on a thief after most of the copper was gone and used it to rip an early gold from Wade. Nate was too passive with his chapel and with those 2 things combined, I took down the victory in probably a 10-12 minute game. Relevant kingdom cards were: Festival, Smithy, Council Room, Chapel, Thief, Woodcutter, and Moat. I don't remember the other ones since I mentally crossed them off my consideration list early. The deck I had when I started going for points was: Festival x3, Smithy x2, Thief, Silver, Gold (from Wade), Chapel, and Estate (I never did manage to chapel it). I started with provinces, bought a council room along the way, stole 3 more silver from Nate and 1 from Wade, and ended the game with 5 provs, 3 duchies, and 1 estate.

Galaxy Trucker
Where Dominion is my strength, this game will forever be my weakness. It a decent game, and different, but it is something I will lose just about every time I play. Wade won this handily with stellar ship building skills, and a great ability to quickly evaluate and remember the crisis cards that are coming. My first ship was only half complete due to my terrible building skills, and then got blown out of the water. My second ship was 75% destroyed when we finished the lap, although I did manage to finish the lap. My third ship actually brought my cumulative dollar total up to the amount Wade got in the first round. I don't remember the final points, but this one was about as close as Tigris & Euphrates.

Agricola
Still getting a lot of play, we pulled out an I-deck 3p version of Agricola. I have to say that the 3p version itself changes the game quite a lot. I failed to adapt well to the extremely limited reed supply and it ended up costing me. I kind of fell into a hard core vegetarian strategy, Wade went hard at house building, renovation, and family growth, Nate went more for his kick-ass occupation cards. None of us did much with animals and we didn't see a single fence built until the final round. Wade ended up winning by 5 points. Despite still having a wooden home, I managed 2nd, and Nate was about 4 points behind me. Wade is a tough nut to crack in this game (ala Power Grid), and played a sound strategy as he adapted well to the changed 3p environment. We all had some good cards, although Wade utilized his the best. He was aided by a card that halved his reed requirement, and that was huge in the 3p game where reeds were very hard to come by. Nate had what I consider to be the best occupation I have seen, an action space that only he can get 2 VPs on (the rest of us can get 3 food). I had an extremely good occupation that let me use the turn 12-14 actions starting on turn 11. Had I been able to setup better for this, it should have won me the game.

Nate’s take on the night:

Thanks for hosting, Wade. I had fun even though I went winless for the night. I averaged 2nd place. Out of 3. Oh, well.

Yeah mostly I blame my own stupidity but what ya gonna do? Be smarter? Ok, yeah. Great plan.

All 4 games were a lot of fun. I think I'll play Galaxy Trucker anytime. Normally I don't like so much randomness in games, but GT is so unabashedly obnoxious you gotta love it. Seeing these carefully but frantically built ships get blown apart due to a bad roll of the dice is akin to the pleasure you'd get from throwing a toilet through a stained-glass window. It's addictive like that.

Like Vree said, Tigris & Euphrates doesn't get played enough. Maybe I'll try it on bsw sometime. For future reference, if one player is drawing 3 colors from monuments every turn since the very early game, just go home.

Dominion, on the other hand, gets played plenty. I am eagerly waiting for the expansion to be released.

Agricola -- 'nuff said.

Wade’s take on the night:

So, Brian and Nate made it over for some gaming this week. I wasn’t sure who else to expect, as Karl had said he couldn’t make it, and Chris was unable to host, which often means he won’t make it either. Joel rarely posts, so I thought he might be there, and Brian had told me probably not in an email earlier in the week. Nate posted he could make it, and apparently I missed a late post from Craig saying he was going to miss. I went in expecting Craig (missed post), Joel (rare poster) and Nate. Instead it was Nate and Brian. That was fine, as the slightly smaller number of players typically means faster games.

Brian arrived first, and Nate was quick behind. After the 3 of us were downstairs, I asked what game people wanted to play and very matter-of-factly Brian said “Tigris and Euphrates” in a voice that I took to mean “this is the game I want to play the most tonight, lets get it to the table.” I like the game and Nate was up for it, so away we went. We all drew tiles, and I think Brian was first to place. I think he played one leader and a tile. Nate took the spots near the edge of the board with a lot of water nearby, which happened to be the farthest from him physically. I was to Nate’s right, and placed 2 leaders, black and green. The game went pretty quickly as we all reviewed the rules a little intermittently but mostly remembered them. There was a quick internal conflict for blue once Nate built a blue/green monument. I supplanted Nate’s blue leader and then successfully defended twice in one turn against Brian’s blue leader, having drawn exactly the right amount of red tiles. Following that, I built a black/green monument in the kingdom that those 2 leaders were touching. These 3 free points per turn spurred me on to victory, although there was one particularly amusing moment where Brian had built up enough, after several turns of preparation, to finally begin an external conflict against Nate and I, but he chose to start with Blue, the one I was facing him on. He had a 3 or 4 tile edge on me to start, then revealed one more tile. I revealed 5, and defeated him. That was a pretty nasty turn of events for him. I also managed to lose a black external conflict to Nate, but then replaced my leader in an internal conflict and took his guy out. Basically the game belonged to me, although a LOT of it was due to a couple lucky pulls of the tiles. The final score was Wade 18, Brian 5, Nate 6. I think the last time we played a 4-player game the winner had a score of 8. I’d imagine that some of that was due to one more player, but it does speak to exactly what the two of them said about gaining free points.

Despite there only being 3 of us we still had an indecisive moment on which game to play next which was solved by someone saying, “we could always play Dominion.” Dominion it was. I knew going in that I was going to get trounced, and that only escalated when I heard how many plays the other guys had on BSW. The first time I played Dominion with Brian I won (at a Chateau night, both our first plays), but since then I haven’t even been close. Nate also has a positive win ratio at the game, so I figured at the least I could learn something. Everyone bought a chapel on turn one or two, with Brian buying silver, Nate a smithy, and I a woodcutter. The turns passed quickly with Brian chapelling away nearly all of his copper and 2 estates, leaving him not much left in the deck but business. He bought a thief card and managed to steal my one gold and one silver from Nate and didn’t look back. A couple festivals and provinces later it was all over, with Brian at 45, Nate somewhere in the 30s, and me at 15. I can say this much for Dominion, I don’t have nearly the clue how to play this game like these 2 do. I’ll be interested to get my BGG expansion cards, and probably will pick up the expansion too once it is released. The game plays well, and it’s so fast that its allows time for people to make up their minds on what to play next. Often that choice will be another game of Dominion, something I consider a mark of a great game. Now I just need to get the euro card sleeves to get this where it needs to be. I’ll get there eventually.

Following these 2, Nate requested Galaxy Trucker. I agreed, and Brian did as well, despite his statement that, “while I’ve played it before, I did terrible”. I believe that Nate had only played once or twice before as well, but he seems to really like the game. I think it’s a lot of fun, and I may even like it better with 3 players than with 4, as there are a few more tiles to go around. That could of course be interpreted as a personal flaw, since more players makes ship building that much more critical. I like to have well built ships not just finish or have to use a lot of suboptimal pieces. In addition, I built the correct ship every time, something I’ve had problems with in the past.

Round one saw Brian sort of close himself off early while Nate and I had pretty good ships. I was able to use my experience with the game to remember the challenges and take a decent lead at the end. I finished first and had the most cargo, plus the prettiest ship (least exposed connectors).

Round two both Nate and Brian looked at the cards that were on their way and I think that helped them both, though Nate more so than Brian if you just look at results. At least this time Brian was able to finish the race, but because of the lack of cargo available for transport in the race, he got fewer points than in the previous race. Also, about mid-round we noticed a design error in Brian’s ship that I had failed to notice when checking it before hand. It ended up not really hurting him at all, but it put me on alert to check things more closely in the future. Nate had a ridiculous amount of battery power this round, I think it was something like 14 at the start.

Round three was the most fun (as it usually is) because the ship building is tougher and longer. In addition, there are more challenges and obstacles, and the consequences for failing to pass them are more deadly. This is where Nate’s comparison to a stained glass window really applies well. I managed to be the window in this little scenario, losing the contest in the combat zone for fewest engines and subsequently blowing off about 8 pieces of my ship due to getting two laser blasts from the same column up my backside. There was no stopping them wherever they came from, but they were particularly brutal. It made for some entertainment at my expense, which I welcome in this game. Actually, I welcome it just about anytime. I can take it.

The final score was about as you’d expect when one person has experience and the other two don’t. I finished with 88 points, Nate was at 45, and I believe Brian was in the 30s. Interestingly enough, the rulebook has a recommendation for when you have one experienced player and one less experienced player, switch ships once they’re built. I think its funny they suggest this, since Chris beat me pretty good his first go through the game. We didn’t do any trading since it was 3 player, but maybe we should have. I think the guys had a good time nonetheless. This game plays very quickly and I think it was probably just about an hour, maybe less. Sometime soon I’ll be getting the expansion which adds new aliens, new pieces, and more deadly event cards that are harder to work past. It should add to the already incredibly fun destructive element of the game and therefore to the number of laugh out loud funny moments during play.

Once again we were looking at my collection deciding what to play. I suggested Agricola and Brian mentioned it on his list of games he’d play. Nate said he was up for it too, so we sort of settled on it and I was excited, since I haven’t played a 3 player game since the first night with Karl and Ashley. We used the I (interactive) deck as well, which was the deck we used that night if I remember correctly. I think I’m happier using separate decks rather than mixing them all together, because I think they work better that way, and there are a lot more cards that play off others in the deck in that scenario. I still have yet to bust into my Z deck, but I’m not sure I really want to do that, mostly because the cards are allegedly a little unbalanced. We also opted not to use the ‘Through the Seasons’ expansion card. I think that’s good considering that Nate didn’t have too much experience with the cards as it was.

I was the first player, which I don’t particularly like, but I knew that I would at least get to play an occupation. Looking through mine, I noticed 2 that I thought would be useful, the net fisherman, which allowed me to claim fishing if I took reed, and the animal something (handler or farmer maybe) which allowed me to pay one food to take an extra animal of the type I took with my family member. This seemed like a pretty simple food engine to me, get the cooking hearth and start taking boar and cattle to eat for food. That was my plan, but I wanted to hide it a little, since if everyone knew I could do that early they may take the cooking hearths away from me. I also had the water carrier which gave me one food per round after someone built the well. Normally that doesn’t happen until very late in the game, so that seemed pretty useless to me. Boy, was I wrong on this one. The others were pretty bad, trading one stone for 3 food (with no extra stone available except for the ‘take one building resource of your choice action’), collecting vegetables from supply instead of the field when you’re supposed to harvest them, taking an extra cattle whenever you take cattle (not terrible, but you can only really do that a couple times), and another that I really can’t remember.

On the minor improvement side I had a couple that seemed really good, one that seemed pretty bad, and a few that were mostly, ‘meh.’ The ladder was one I instantly recognized as awesome, as it decreased my reed requirement by one for each room or renovation, meaning I’d only need 2 or 3 the entire game. The reed is scarce in a 3 player game, as there is only one space that provides it, so I thought the not needing it as much would be very helpful. I was absolutely right on in this thought. I was able to get the ladder to the table very early and it helped a lot to smooth things out during the game. I managed to play 2 rooms with only 2 reed (the actions I used to get the reed were at least supplemented by getting food at the same time), and renovated without reed at all, since it normally only takes one. In addition, I had a plow that allowed me to plow 2 spaces one time, and I had an animal pen which allowed me to hold each type of animal on it. That was actually very helpful, as I was able to use my animal occupation to take a bunch of animals and build my point total without having pastures built. Of the rest of my cards I had the village well, which requires return of the actual well. That wasn’t going to happen this game. I had a guest card, paying 2 food for an extra action in the next round. I ended up using this for something valuable, and I passed it to Brian very late, so he never used it, which made it ok. Then I had the option for reed trading, turning 2 clay or wood into 1 reed. Not terrible in a game where one or the other of those is in abundance, but it is still pretty bad.

Of the cards from the other players that I saw, Brian had a pretty good engine going with a card that allowed him to plow a field every time he took grain, then one that allowed him to bake every time he did plowed. He was hurt by not growing his family very quickly. His late occupation that allowed him to use the last 4 rounds action cards before anyone else might have been really good, but I’m not as convinced, as a lot of time you’re not really quite ready to use those until they are available anyhow, and it does cost you an action and food to get that ability. Its sort of a tempo thing, but I’m not convinced it’s as great as I thought it was during the game. I did think that it sounded good, and I’d like to play with it before I condemn it. Its one I need to try.

Nate had quite a few cards that were pretty nice. In particular, the occupation of well builder was really good. It allowed him to build the well as a minor improvement with only one stone and one wood. That certainly made my village well useless, as there was no way I could build the well before he did, but it made the water carrier amazing, as I gained about 10 food from that one occupation, one per round from 5 to 14. That was pretty good. Maybe it was a little more than pretty good. He also had a minor improvement called the tavern that created another action space. If one of us took the action, we gained 3 food. If he took the action, he got 2 bonus points. I think he managed 6 or 8 points from this one, but it came at the expense of the rest of his farm, as he neglected several aspects of the scoring and suffered for it. Some of his trouble came from not understanding the nuances of baking bread. Apparently there was a card in his hand that would have prevented him from losing points for empty spaces on his card. This alone would have taken him from third to second. I always mean to look at the cards that other people were holding to see what I would have done with them, but most of the time we’re already cleaning up as I’m totaling the score, so that doesn’t happen. As it was, I finished with 35, Brian had 30, and I believe Nate had 23.

In general, we had a great night playing games, and everyone got to play at least one game that they really liked. I think I need to get in some more Dominion, but that will come. Next time we’ll play more than one game.

No gaming for me next Wednesday, so there won’t be a session report, but I hope there’ll be a bonus one coming shortly anyhow.