Session Report for Friday, 6/1/2007

14 gamers, 16 games

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Othello

(August, Stephanie)

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For Sale

(Robert, Marshall, Joanne, Gina, Chris, Nick)

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Vegas Showdown

(Nick, Kevin, Marshall)

This was my first game of Vegas Showdown and I was positively impressed. In the game you play a hotel-casino manager trying to attract the most customers, and thus money, to your establishment. Each player has a player-mat which represents their hotel-casino. Players build up their hotel-casino one room at a time by buying rooms and placing them on their mat. Rooms (such as slots, lounges, restaurants, and several premium rooms) come in various sizes and have doors on some of their sides. The doors have to connect to other rooms when placed, and ultimately, you have to be able to trace a path to one of the hotel-casino doors. Rooms provide customers, money, points, or some combination of those. If you need to you can even remodel your hotel and change the configuration of your rooms.

There is also a deck of action cards that come into play when a premium room is purchased. These spice up the game without throwing in too much randomness.

All in all I really enjoyed the game and look forward to playing it again. I'm adding it to my want list but it's not such a high priority since several others in the group own it. I even suspect it would be better with 4 or 5 players than with 3. I guess I'll have to play it again to find out.

KevinLi - 03 Jun 2007 :

I liked the game, too, and agree that it would probably be better with 4 or 5 players. With 3 it seemed a little too easy to fill up your hotel/casino spaces and to get the rooms that you wanted. It was still enjoyable, though.

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Ra

(Clint, Chris, Scott)

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Alhambra

(Clint, Chris, Scott, Ty)

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Setters of Catan

(Robert, August, Joanne, Gina)

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Hey! That's My Fish

(Nick, Marshall, Kevin)

My first three player game of Hey! That's My Fish and I think it works just as well with three as with four. Very fun, quick game. It's almost TOO much about territory though. You can pretty much forget about the fish and just make your moves based on avoiding isolation for as long as possible.

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High Society

(Nick, Marshall, Kevin) x2

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Taj Mahal

(Chris, Scott, Ty, Joanne, Gina)

Taj Mahal is a bidding game that takes place in India. There are twelve turns with an auction for up to six different prizes each turn. Players use cards to bid for the various prizes. The trick is when you take a turn and you've got the highest bid on a prize, you can either spend more cards to try for other things or simply take your winnings and walk away. The prizes are mostly positions on the board and players get more points for connecting provinces on the map. There are also other prizes involving goods (rice, tea, jewels, etc) that can compound points if you already have items that match the goods you win. The longer you stay involved in a auction, the better chance you have of winning multiple prizes, but you run the risk of using many cards and only getting one card back in return (normally when you leave an auction you get two cards). This is another game from Knizia so while the basic idea of the game is simple, there are many things going on and some little curves thrown in.

I really like this game, but I have yet to really learn how to connect my taj mahals to multiple provinces on a consistant basis. I tend to try to get multiples of similar goods which seems to work pretty well for getting points, but I think connecting provinces have the potential to be a good way to get alot of points especially in the later rounds.

-- ScottK - 04 Jun 2007

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Amun-Re

(Marshall, August, Nick, Robert, Kevin)

Amun-Re, in my mind, is an amazing game of economic development that looks, at first anyway, to be relatively straight forward but turns out to have some obtuse strategy, and is very unforgiving of mistakes.

One mistake that is frequently made is to value VPs too highly in the first kingdom. If you come out of the first kingdom with about 10 VP you're doing ok, most of the VP are scored in the second kingdom. It's more important to come out of the first kingdom with the most money. Having the most money allows you to buy the best provinces in the second kingdom. Ones with lots of pyramids (and thus lots of points) already built for you.

Another mistake is trying to get a set of pyramids AND most pyramids during the first kingdom. It's great if you can do it cheap, but the other players shouldn't let you do that, and it's not worth it if it becomes too expensive. Basically in the first kingdom you should either get a set or get most but not both. If you see someone trying to get both you shouldn't let them (or at least make it expensive for them). Usually the first person to "declare" that they are going for most pyramids (by building more than one pyramid on a single province) isn't challenged unless they also try to go for a set. It's too risky to challenge them and risk not getting most or a set for an incremental payoff of only two points (two points is the difference between getting most pyramids, which is not guaranteed, and getting a set, which no one can stop you from doing).

Amun-Re is a very heavy game. There's a lot going on that you have to think about and you constantly need to be planning for the end of the kingdom. I rate it a 10.

Very nice box art in my opinion also.

-- MarshallPhilips - 03 Jun 2007

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Railroad Tycoon

(Robert, August, Tracy, Stephanie)

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Power Grid

(Kevin, Karen, Nick, Paul)

First game I've played in which most of the play (on the U.S. board) was in the Midwest and West. The Mid-Atlantic and Southeast sections were blocked off. That made for a lot of expensive connections and also for a lot of jumping around the board with connect-throughs, rather than building stations in adjacent cities.

I made the mistake of sticking with my usual strategy of building in the cities with the most adjacent cheap connections, in this case the Northeast. But everyone else began building in the Midwest. More expensive, but it gave them easier access to the West, and it blocked me off.

Karen had the best position on the board, staking out relatively inexpensive Upper Midwest. She was also pretty conservative in buying power plants and stayed in the middle or back of the player order, giving her an advantage in buying resources and choosing new cities. That ended up being a winning combination.

KevinLi - 03 Jun 2007 :

It was a bit of an odd game in how the power plants came out. With four players, the #13 plant (wind farm) was taken out of the deck, along with 4 other random plants. In our game, those four were all midlevel plants. A lot of high level plants were put in the futures market early in the game. I bought the #33 plant on the third turn.

I started in the Denver/Boulder area, and tried to block off everyone's access to the rest of the West. But because connections start off expensive there, the others were able to power more cities and get more money in the early rounds. This gave Nick and Paul the funds to pay two or three connection costs at the same time in order to jump to an unserved area in the Southwest.

One minor quibble I have with the game is that with four players, the game doesn't end until 17 cities have been reached. There didn't seem like quite enough 6 and 7 capacity power plants to go around for all four of us, but maybe I'll just have to adjust my strategy in the future to take this into account.

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Cartagena

(Kevin, Karen, Nick, Paul)

-- LoboSolo (Nick) - 03 Jun 2007

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Quoridor

(Kevin, Paul) x 3

-- KevinLi - 03 Jun 2007
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