Wichita Boardgamers
Session Report for Friday, 02/03/2006
11 Players, 14 Games
High Society (Marshall, August, Clint, Kevin K., Kevin L.)
MarshallPhilips -
With five of us present we started off with a quick game of High Society. High Society is one of my favorite fillers because it manages to pack a whole lot of tension into a small quick package. Every turn you take feels like the most important turn in the world!
This turned out to be one of my worst games ever of High Society. By the end I had managed to win one 2x tile and the Thief. That's it, no points, no nothing. Just two times zero! And the thief and a ton of unspent money! I think Kevin L. was the winner of this game.
Through the Desert (Marshall, Kyle, Clint)
MarshallPhilips -
With the arrival of several more players we split up into three games. Tutankhamen, Reef Encounter, and this one: Through the Desert.
With only three players we truncated part of the board and I took five camels out of each pile. I'm not sure if that is the right number though because the game felt like it ran a little longer than usual.
There were a lot of points scored off of sequestered areas in this game. Clint closed off just a massive area in the center of the board against the cliff. He also was the first person I ever saw to close off an area without using a feature on the board. With one of his caravans he totally surrounded a single hex. That may not be the most efficient way to get one point!
Reef Encounter (Kevin K., Kevin L., Drew, August)
DrewWoodworth -
I had never played this game before, but remembered Marshall and
Kevin L. talking about it on the message board. It did take quite a bit of explanation, but I think Kevin L. handled it very well. There wasn't a lot of confusion during the playing of the game because Kevin was very thorough in his explanation.
Basically, you create reefs of different types of coral to be
eaten. You try to make the reef as large as possible because you get more points the larger it is. Also, there are all sorts of mechanics that allow other corals to take over other types of corals. I'm probably not doing the game justice in this explanation since it is rather complex. Anyway, the game went pretty smoothly, and I believe Kevin K. ended up winning.
Tutankhamen (Mike, Chris, Scott)
Poison (Mike, Marshall, Richard, Marie, Scott, Chris)
MarshallPhilips -
Here's a game that was new to me and was played in the group for the first time. Poison is a light card game in which there are 4 suits. There are potions in three colors (Red, Purple, Blue) and several denominations (1, 2, 4, 7 I think but don't quote me). There is also a green suit which consists soley of the Poison cards each with a denomination of 4. On your turn you play one card from your hand into one of 3 cauldrons. The color of the card must match the color of the cauldron although Poison cards can be played with any color. When you play the card you must add up all the points on all of the cards in the cauldron and if the total exceeds 13 then you must take all of those cards into your score pile (which is bad because you don't want points in this game). The card you played which pushed the total over 13 you leave in the cauldron.
At the end of the round (which occurs when everyone has exhausted their hand) you reveal your score pile and see who has the most cards of each color. Whoever has the most gets to discard all cards of that color (you can't get rid of poison cards this way however). The remaining cards in your score pile are worth one point each and poison cards are worth two points. You play several rounds and lowest score wins.
And that's it, it's a relatively simple game yet it generates a lot of angst as you watch the cauldrons filling up as your turn approaches. Yet, it's shear ecstacy to play a card that puts the cauldron right at 13 points!
Tower of Babel (Marshall, Clint, Mike)
MarshallPhilips -
In this game players are trying to build the 8 wonders of the world and they must work together to do so. On your turn you try to complete a major piece of one of the wonders and you enterain offers of help from the other players. You can accept or reject the offers as you wish but you need to make sure you get your work done otherwise you'll surely fall behind. The other players have incentive to help you because accepted offers can lead to a lot of points and even rejected offers generate points in proportion to the size of the offer.
This was my first game of Tower of Babel with three players, previously I had played only with five players. With three players it's noticably harder to complete the wonders simply because there are fewer resources in the game, I like that this aspect is more challenging because with five players it's rare not to complete your work on your turn. However, with three players the decision about which offers to accept or reject wasn't nearly so interesting. Each player is only contemplating two offers at a time so it's usually pretty straight forward. With more players sorting out the resutling offers is more complex and many permutations are possible.
Since the heart of the game is really the offer mechanic and the decision on which to accept and reject I like the game more with more players. Everything becomes more intersting. It's a good game with three players but really shines with five. Next I'll have to try it with four, who knows, maybe that is the magic number. Clint was the runaway leader in this game.
Ra (August, Drew, Kevin K., Kevin L.)
DrewWoodworth -
I really like Ra, even though, I rarely win. It just seems that
there are always tough decisions to make, but it rarely causes
analysis paralysis. Also, the in game clock always make one feel as if they're pushing their luck. I think it make for a very tense, but light game with a variety of gut wrenching decisions. If you haven't played Ra, its basically an auction game where you bid on different types of tiles that score you points at the end of each round. However, certain tiles are required in conjunction with other tiles in order to get points. Also, the tiles are pulled randomly out of the bag, so if you pull a "Ra" tile it starts an auction. Kevin K. ended up winning, I believe.
Gold Digger (Richard, Marie, Scott, Chris)
Havoc (Clint, Kevin L., Mike, Drew, Richard, Chris)
DrewWoodworth -
Havoc is basically a card game where you try to make six card Poker type hands to win different battle of the Hundred Years War. There is some bluffing involved since you are not required to lay down your hand all at once. So, there's a little bit of predicting if someone really has the hand and whether or not you think you can beat them. The downside is, if you lay your cards down, they're all used up and cannot be used again even if you didn't win. So, there is some card management, also. So, each battle is worth a different
amount of points, and whoever has the most points at the end is the winner. In this game, Mike was the winner.
Boomtown (Kevin K., Scott, Marie, August, Marshall)
MarshallPhilips
Boomtown is a game set in the old west where players compete for mining rights. Getting the most lucrative mines is important as they generate money throughout the game and points at the end of the game.
Mining rights are awarded in an auction where the winner pays his money to the person on the right, who gives half to the person on his right, who gives half to the person on his right, etc... till the money's gone. Then players choose a mine or a special action card from among those available (a number equal to the number of players) starting with the auction winner and proceeding to the his left. This sets up an interesting situation where the auction winner pays money to get the best card, the player to his left gets the second best card but probably doesn't get any money from the auction. Whereas the player to the winner's right will get the worst card but the most money. A very intersting way to balance things.
There's a bit more chrome with things like Mayors, Saloons and a 2d6 production role similar to Setters to spice things up but that's the gist of it. At the end of the game each gold coin is worth one point and each gold symbol on a mine is worth one point. Player with the most points wins. In our game I think that was Scott.
Palazzo (Kevin L., August, Marshall)
MarshallPhilips
I've played Palazzo several times now with all numbers of players (2 to 4) and I've about reached the conclusion that three is the best number. Since there are a fixed amount of resources in the game (the building tiles that the Palazzos are constructed from) there is simply less to go around in a four player game. So much so that usually one player gets really screwed. With two players there's plenty to go around, it's a pretty good two player game in fact (very few auction games work with two but this one does) but I think the balance between resources and number of action available to acquire them is at its best with three players. It's really a tense game with that number, you get a sense that each decision matters but isn't necessarily life or death. Just how I like it. Kevin L. won this game on the strength of a full five story, single material, Palazzo.
El Grande (Drew, Mike, Kevin K., Chris)
DrewWoodworth -
It was getting late so we decided to play one last game. El Grande isn't a short game, but there is short version, so that's what we played. El Grande is basically a territory influence game, where you use various mechanics to get you people on the board. It is played in three rounds and scored at the end of each. There is also a bidding mechanic to determine turn order. There is a lot of balancing in the game since you need to both defend and attack. Most of the players had played it before, so it seemed to go pretty smooth. I managed to squeak out a victory due to being able to, due to some stealing of points from Mike at the end. However, it was a
very tight game right up until the end. I think at one point in the third round, three of the four players were tied for first place.
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