Session Report for Friday 10/3/2008

13 Gamers 11 Games

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Manila

(Robert, Georgia, Drew, Marshall)

Manila is a quasi-betting game, where players send their workers to the ships, ports, and repair docks of Manila in order to escort and receive cargo as it is delivered. It costs money to position your people, and they only return money if their position pays off (the ship reaches port without being accosted by pirates, or the berth in the dock receives a ship) so you have to choose carefully. The ships move according to die roles so it's somewhat random where they will end up, or if they will be hijacked by pirates, but players can influence the fates of the ships. There is also a small stock market where goods that are successfully delivered increase in value and players buy "shares" in those goods. Getting shares in valuable goods is certainly a key to winning the game. In this particular game, Georgia was able to win off of the strength of 2 green shares when green reached a value of 30. All of the other goods were either 5 or less. It's a fun game with great components, I think I'll stay on the look out for it in the BGG.con math trade.

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Jamaica

(Greg S., Clint, Alex A., Katie, Bart)

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No Thanks

(Marshall, Drew, Georgia, August, Robert)

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Medici

(Bart, Greg S., August, Robert, Georgia)

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Carcassonne: New World

(Marshall, Drew, Katie, Alex, Clint)

Carcassonne: New World is the latest in the Carcassonne family of games. This one isn't an expansion, however, it's a standalone game. In fact it's hardly different from basic Carcassonne at all. The main difference is that expansion of the board occurs as tiles are placed from east to west. The scoring track forms the "east coast" of the board and is seeded with several starting tiles. From there players add tiles "West", they can't play north or south of the scoring track. The other different thing is the "Surveyors". Whenever a feature is completed (say a road, city, or farm) one of the two Surveyors moves one column to the west. If any meeple finds himself to the east of BOTH surveyors then that meeple is removed from the board.

The Surveyors have the biggest impact on the game obviously. The encourage scoring smaller features as there's little time to build a massive city, or a long road. Whether this is good or bad depends on your tastes, the Surveyors do tend to "unstick" your meeples from features that never would have been completed. If Carcassonne is your game, then you probably can't go wrong with New World. Drew won this game based on the strength of a huge field with a "trapper" and lots of animals.

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Age of Empires III

(Marshall, Bart, Courtney, Richard H., Katie)

There are several viable paths to victory in AoEIII^?. I usually see how the game is developing before committing to one of them. In this game I saw that I could get the trade good in the Caribbean if I committed three colonists to the effort, and I also happened to get the Merchant Ship on the first turn. Thus my strategy naturally fell to colonizing and trade goods, and that's what I concentrated on for the rest of the game. I did throw in a liberal dose of soldiers to protect my colonies. I'm a big fan of soldiers and battles, I think they're a bit underrated on BGG. But, whenever I'm going for heavy colonizing I always like to send along the guns. In the end my colony points and a big pay off from trade goods was enough to win the game. The other three players were bunched really tight in a close finish.

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Shadows Over Camelot

(Bart, August, Phillip, Tracy, Georgia, Clint)

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Shogun

(Bart, Robert, Georgia, Clint)

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War On Terror

(August, Phillip, Tracy)

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Punct (2x)

(August, Tracy)

-- MarshallPhilips - 06 Oct 2008
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