Session Report for Friday 11/7/2008

19 Gamers 15 Games

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Fairy Tale

(Marshall, Ty, Kevin K., Greg S.)

Fairy Tale is the new filler card game I brought back from Japan. It's a drafting game where players form their by drawing 5 cards from the deck, select one, pass the rest, then select another from the 4 cards that were received, pass the rest... and so on until each player has 5 cards that they selected. Players then play one card in from of them and keep it there for the rest of the game. Cards are worth various amounts of points (sometimes depending on specific card combinations a player owns) and some cards have special actions that are triggered when played. In the basic game (which we played) the actions are either "open" or "close" where open means turn a card of a specific suit face up, and close means to turn a card of a specific suit face down.

At the end of four rounds of drafting and playing the players total their scores keeping in mind that closed cards don't score anything. The strategy in the game, therefore, is to keep as many of your cards open as possible, but that can be difficult given that most of the high scoring cards will force you to close something, and also other players can sometimes force you to close a card.

The basic game is pretty simple and quick and is really just a filler. The advanced game adds 20 more cards to the deck with more complicated scoring possibilities and new actions. I hope to get a chance to play the advanced game soon.

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No Thanks

(Bart, Luke, Arcadia, Katie, Alex A.) x2

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Coloretto

(Boomer, Clint, Richard H.)

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Cartagena

(Robert S., Bart, Katie, Alex A.)

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Samurai

(Bubs, Mathew, Richard H., Marshall)

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St. Petersburg

(Greg S., Kevin K., Scott, Ty)

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Touch of Evil

(Nick, Clint, Luke, Arcadia, August)

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Imperial

(Boomer, Bubs, Richard H., Marshall)

This was a pretty interesting game of Imperial that featured more "peace treaties" than I usually see. I think the best strategy in Imperial is to control two countries that share a common front so that you enforce the peace on that front and concentrate the energies of those countries elsewhere. With that strategy in mind I spent most of the game trying to control France and Great Britain in order to ensure they wouldn't fight in the North Atlantic. I was successful in controlling France for the whole game, but Great Britain went in and out of my control.

I pretty quickly put France in a good position with a huge tax base, mostly by skipping the produce and import actions in favor of maneuver and tax. This shot France up in points to a 4x multiplier, but also put a target on her. With her small army, and with most of the eastern countries not attacking each other, she was quickly overrun. France's tax base was stripped and her factories largely shut down. This left me unable to put France over the top and end the game.

Great Britain didn't do quite as well as France because the Germans and Russians had a large army and weren't fighting, but G.B. did eventually make it up to the 4x multiplier anyway.

At one point Germany actually invaded the home islands of Great Britain and shut down a factory. I temporarily took control of Germany in order to do something about this, but quickly wished I hadn't. Germany wasn't exactly shooting up the points track and I spent a lot of money on German bonds. Potentially a huge waste. Fortunately, by the end of the game Germany got up to 3x on the points track making those bonds not a complete waste.

After some initial sparring between Germany and Austria Hungary peace generally reigned in the east. Russia had a huge army, and nobody to fight. This made taxing with Russia problematic (because of the huge costs to support that army) and probably kept Russia from ending the game sooner. Eventually Boomer, who controlled Russia for most of the game, taxed anyway and ended the game.

With control of France (4x) and strong bonds in Great Britain (4x) and Russia (5x) I was able to get the win. Austria Hungary also got to 4x, while Germany hit 3x and poor Italy had worthless bonds at 0x.

For most of the second half of the game Bubs pursued a countryless strategy preferring to buy non-controlling positions in all countries. This strategy didn't do too bad as his score was competitive, but I like to be in the mix controlling a country or two personally.

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Master Thieves

(Bart, Katie, Alex A., Mathew)

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Moonshot

(Scott, Kevin K., Greg S.)

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Thebes

(Scott, Kevin K., Greg S.)

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Vegas Showdown

(Mathew, Clint, August)

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Twilight Struggle

(Boomer, Greg)

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Power Grid: China

(August, Clint, Richard H., Robert)

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-- MarshallPhilips - 09 Nov 2008
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