Session Report for Saturday, 06/17/2006

14 Players, 10 Games

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El Grande

(Chad, Josh, John, Scott K., Kevin K.)

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Power Grid (France)

(Kevin L., Karen, Allen, August, Chris)

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New England

(Darren, Dave, Drew, Marshall)

MarshallPhilips -

New England is a game about acquiring and developing plots of land in pre-revolutionary America. Briefly the game works as follows:

• Players "bid" for turn order by taking a uniquiely numbered gold coin, highest number will go first. The catch is that your actions will cost you the number on your coin. Want to go first? Fine, but it will make everything more expensive that turn. This is a really neat mechanism I think.

• In turn order players then take one or two actions. An action consists of buying and placing a tile (farms) or taking and using an action card (pilgrims, ships, barns, or development).

• All players then get income, four gold plus one for each pilgrim.

The points in the game really come from development cards which allow you to "develop" your plots of land and score points if you meet the conditions on the card (the conditions are the number and particular arrangement of your plots) so most of the game is spent creating opportunities to use these cards. Pilgrims, barns, and ships add some more strategic options and score a few points at the end. Of these pilgrims are most obviously useful in that they give you an extra coin each turn. There are some restrictions on playing tiles to the board which create a tightness and sense of urgency to "claim space".

Overall I was pretty impressed with the game and would like to play it again (though only with four players as I can see the three player game wouldn't be as interesting).

I believe Dave won this game rather handily as he was the only one to score a 10 point 2x2 development card. Next time I'll know to grab a 10 point card and stick it in my Barn

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Puerto Rico

(John, Josh, Scott K., Kevin K., Drew)

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Louis XIV

(Chad, Marshall, Darren, Dave)

MarshallPhilips -

Ah Louis, Intrigue in the Court of the Sun King indeed!

In Louis XIV players are trying to curry favor from the court of the Sun King in order to complete "Missions". Completed Missions both score points at the end of the game and allow players extra abilities during the game so they're really nice to have.

There are 12 personalities in the court and each gives a unique reward. Some rewards are usefull for completing missions and some are usefull for getting gold or more influence. Also King Louis himself wanders around the inner court during the game and will give extra rewards if you win his favor.

The game is played over the course of four rounds and each round has four phases:

• 1) Supply - during this phase players receive money and King Louis moves to a new location. Players also receive 5 influence cards to be played during the next phase.

• 2) Influence - During this phase players use their cards to influence members of the court in an attempt to win their favor and thier reward. The mechanics of placing influence is rather convoluted so I won't go into it but this is really where the heart of the game is.

• 3) Scoring - One by one each member of the court is scored with the player having the most influence on that member winning the reward. Often losers can still get the reward by paying gold as a bribe. Sometimes this option isn't avaialbe though.

• 4) Mission - players may now complete missions if they have the appropriate rewards. Completed missions are laid face up in front of the player and confer special abilities to that player for the rest of the game.

At the end of the fourth round the game ends and points are tallied. Completed missions are worth five points and shields (which are accumulated as rewards throughout the game) are worth one point. There's a bit of business about handing out random bonus shields to players having a majority of one shield type. This is much complained about on BGG but is really just a way to make shields worth slightly more than 1 point each. I suppose they could have said something like "get one extra point for every 4 shields" it would average out to about the same number of points but without the randomness.

In this game Chad won handily mainly because the other players let him win King Louis too often and too cheaply. The extra favors from the King let Chad complete 7 missions which is a huge number considering the next more completed was 4.

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Cartegena

(August, Karen, Allen, Kevin L., Chris)

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Coloretto

(Marshall, Darren, Dave, Chad)

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Samurai

(Marshall, Kevin L., Dave, Chad)

MarshallPhilips -

For everyone else but me I think this was either the first time ever playing Samurai or the first time in awhile. So this was bascally a learning/refereshing game.

The strategy in Samurai is pretty opaque. About all I do is try not to set up a scoring opportunity that can be realized by playing only one tile. It's impossible to never set up a scoring opportunity for the next guy but when you do you should at least make sure it takes playing two tiles to get it. Sooner or later your opponents will use up their best tiles and you'll be able to win more battles.

Also, the game hinges on the use of your tile that lets you swap two figures. Using this tile poorly (i.e. capturing less than two figures with it) will almost surely doom you in the game. Keep your eye out for opportunities to use this tile to its highest advantage. And if the game is getting close to the end try to end it on your turn, this will deprive other players of a final scoring opportunity.

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Ra

(Karen, August, Chris, Allen, Darren)

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Poison

(Drew, Scott K., John, Kevin K.

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-- MarshallPhilips - 19 Jun 2006
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