January Game Log

Ilise's: Starting order Ilise, Me, John. We all went heavy in builder strategy and the money was flowing. I had the customhouse and residence (not manned), John had the Guild Hall and Ilise had the Fortress and City Hall. I had plenty of shipping points but not having the residence manned killed me.
Ilise (53), Me (47), John (40)

2nd

Silverton

MVGA: First play for Dan and I. This is a railroad building game set in the southwest. The game is a slight more complex than a crayon rail game. It has a nice stock market simulation for the goods in the game. I started out by buying a mine that was basically a dud. My bad luck was not as bad as Dan who depleted his mine on the second turn if not the first time. We played for three hours but only got half the game in.
Walter (10700), Rich (10600), Bill (9000), Me (5075), Dan (2000)

210

3rd

Purchase:King's Gate ($16)

B20: Staring Order Kelli, Me, Nick, Andrew, Joe.
Andrew and Joe try doing a factory strategy. I did a builder strategy using tobacco with office and large market for money. Also picked up three quarries. Kelli made a couple of choices that totally helped me win. I was able to build three big buildings (Custom House, Guildhall and the Fortress), which gave me enough points to win.
Me (64), Nick (53), Andrew (52), Joe (40), Kelli (35)

Princes of Florence

B20: Starting order Me, Nick, Adam, Dave F, Kyle
Picked up a prestige card in the first turn. My selection of works was bad since four of the five were large building, forcing me to get two builders. Adam did a bonus card and jester building scheme. Two of his works were 25-point works.
Adam (59), Me (55), Nick (53), Kyle (52), Dave F (44)

Settlers of Catan: City and Knights

B20: Nick won by producing only two movies getting 40 points in bonuses. I completed four movies and got the best direction award. Kyle had the worst movie with a 5.
Nick (75), Me (66), Dave F (61), Adam (53), Kyle (48)

Rome: Circus Maximus

B20: Andrew, Al, Scott, Dave F and I broke in Andrew's new game Rome that has three games in one box. We played Circus Maximus, which is a chariot racing game. It's a simple game in which each player has to move three chariots. Five cards, labeled 1 thru 5, determine moves. Each chariot must use at least one card. The winner is the first player to park all three of his chariots in the finishing zone.
Me

Delta Dragons

B20: My final game of the night. Scott, Al, Dave F, and I played. Object of the game is to be the first player to get the opposite side of your starting area. Each turn player can add/remove stones, planks, move a player's token, halt another player's actions, etc. Five actions are planned for in advance and are executed simultaneously, al la Roborally.
Me

7th

Online: Starting order: Me, James, Lloyd, John
We were nicely defended against the barbarians except James built an extra city just before they landed. So the first set of barbarians forced each player to lose a city. The rolls in this game were really lopsided. Fives and fours rolled above average. When my numbers came up it was usually in a cluster. There was one round were everything produced for me, allowing me to build a settlement, add two roads and upgrade to city during my turn. I had one and John had two points from defender of Catan.
John took longest road by breaking James longest road with a knight and took the trader from me. James built two metros but John won anyway.
The game end, not soon enough for Lloyd, on turn 23.

John 13,James 10, me 9, Lloyd 6

120

8th

Al's: Roberto was latest so we decided to play a couple quick games of Bluff.
Game 1: Me, Tufo, Rich, Maria, Al
Game 2: Maria, Me, Al, Rich, Tufo

Union Pacific

Al's: I taught the game to the group. I was first in Union Pacific shares and there was a three-way tie for 2nd. Rich had the shares for a tie in first place but choose not to play them. Hmmm. I only had solo control of three of the smaller line. The big lines were fought for heavily. The Green line had a three-way tie at the end of the game. Red and Yellow were shared. The final scoring round came up quickly.
Me (101), Al (82), Rich (66), Roberto (66), Tufo (61), Maria (58)

Carcassonne

Al's: We used the river expansion and the farmers came out in droves. Roberto went heavy into farming. Tufo and I ignored the farmers going for city and road building. Al and I went for creating big cities or at least sharing them. The meadow got merged into two with Roberto feeding 12 cities and someone else only got 2.
Roberto (89), Me (82), Al (70), Rich (45), Maria (43), Tufo (39)

Herr der Ringe, Der: die Zwei Türme das Kartenspiel

Al's: Rich and Tofu went off to play on the Xbox so we broke out our favorite game. The board was light in sheep production, which added to the length of the game. I grabbed the longest road early in the game but lost it when Al built a city on my road while Maria and Roberto blocked my growth. Maria ended up with the longest road. Near the end of the game the Sheep rolls start coming and Maria began a rapid settlement growth.
Maria (10), Me (7), Al (6), Roberto (6)

120

9th

Dvonn

Danger Planet: Mike Baer and played this 2-player abstract game. Neither of use had played before so we sat down and read the rules. Mike started first by playing one red chip. We alternated in placing the three red chips on the board. After that we placed the rest of our 23 chips on the board. After placement we start the capture phases of the game. Each piece can move but it must land on another chips. The size of the chip stack determines the spaces that it must move. If at any point some of the chips are not directly connected to a red chip those chips are removed from the board. The game continues till neither player can make a legal move. Who ever had the most stacks wins. I was able to isolate a whole bunch of Mike's chips giving me the victory.
Me (2), Mike (1)

Big Aisle Small Cart

Danger Planet: Doug and Karl were looking for players for Karl's new game. This turned out to be a silly game about shopping. The card deck was comprised of items and event cards. Each player gets two actions per turn where an action is put an item into your shopping cart, attacking another player's shopping card or playing events. The first player to get five different types of items in their cart wins. The game is pretty chaotic with the leader getting most of the attacks.
Me, Doug, Karl, Mike, Adam

King's Gate

Danger Planet: I had brought this game but we used Vitas's copy instead. New to all of use so we spent some time go over the rules. This is tile laying game. Each player places tiles (1x1 inch) around the current location (2x1 inch). When 10 tiles surround the current location, a scoring round is initiated. The players score VP based on the value of the player's tiles surrounds the current location. The player that started the scoring round places the next location adjacent to any tiles of his choice. The game ends after the 10th location is scored.
Karl (23), Me (22), Vitas (19), Mike (17)

Labyrith Card Game

Danger Planet: Another tile laying game that we have played before. We use the caffinated variant to hopefully make this game more challenging. It didn't help.
Mike (10), Karl (10), Vitas (8), Me (8)

10th

B20: English name, Lord the Rings: Two Towers Card Game. This is Knizia game hand management game. There are eight sites that the party must progress through. Between sites are a number of rounds, determined randomly. During this time a player may pickup any of the previously discarded cards or select one from the draw deck. A player may discard one card to pick two cards. Each player that at the site plays any number of cards. A player can have four different colored stacks where each stack has one symbol. The players with the most symbols of the site card gets first place VPS, second most cards get second place VPs, etc. Player with the most points after the 8th site wins.
Adam (19), Me (19), Dave F (17), Scott (15), Matt (14)

Trias

B20: My second play of this game. This time I placed my dinos on the edge of the board and is seems to work. I was able to break away a nice 5 hex island with only my dinos. I was able to concentrate on growing my herds and spread onto several islands.
Me (24), Matt (23), Adam (22), Vitas (8), Gary (7)

Cave Troll

B20: With most people busy playing Union Pacific and Puerto Rico, we played Vitas' new game, Cave Troll. It's a pretty easy dungeon crawl game. Each player gets 20 chips to start with. Each turn a play has four actions. An action can be either draw a chip, move a chip or perform an action. The game ends when a player plays their last chip. Gary got an artifact early in the game and used it to spank our ass. He got the chalice, which allows the owner the ability to move any number of chips in a room to another room. Gary loaded up a stairwell with chips and played the chalice before playing his last chip.
Gary (83), Me (41), Vitas (39)

Java

B20: Looks like we were out of sync with rest of the group. Vitas suggested playing his game Java. Initially it looked like this was going to be another victory for Gary. He scored a huge 15-point reservoir while vitas and I were only scoring 9 points. Gary reached the end game condition of placing the last 3-hex tile. I had the last scoring round, which allowed me to figure that I needed to score 20 points but I got 26 more points.
Me (85), Gary (79), Vitas (75)

Ultra Vilelence

B20: First play for both of us. Spent an hour going over the rules, which were organized badly. Similar feel to Frag, Nuff said.
Vitas

120

11th

Cave Troll

Home: Game night at my place. Vitas suggested we play Cave Troll while I grilled up the steak tips. The Cave Troll came out early block out some valuable rooms. I got lucky and my orcs were able to kill a knight. I placed my chips quickly and try to control the end game just like Gary had done last night. I was able to take control of a room with two treasures before end game scoring.
Me (70), Chris(56), Vitas (40), Todd (40)

Starfarers of Catan

Home: I suggested Starfarers because I had not played it yet and it turns out the Vitas or Todd had not played it either. Chris had played once but didn't remember to the rules. So I read the rules out loud and used the base setup for the game. I initially added boosters to my ship so I could reach the first system so I could build my colony. My second colony ship turned out to be an explorer ship. Each system I checked either had pirate or ice planets and I couldn't do anything about it. After reaching the end of board I built up my laser and took on a pirate planet. My replace chip a low number but the adjacent planet was a six. Vitas and I were tied at 13 near the end of the game. He had created a starport near one of the alien's trading post so all he need was another trade ship to take the 2VP chip from me. I upgraded my lasers to five and built another colony ship. I took on another pirate planet and settled it for the victory.
Me (15), Vitas (13), Todd (9), Chris(9)

150<

Home: Vitas and Chris wanted to play a bidding game and everyone agreed on Traumfabrik. I'm awful in bidding game but somehow this game is different. I completed the first yellow and purple movies and got best picture for the first quarter. Chris completed a 19 pointer in the second round and it remained the best pictures for the 2nd and 3rd rounds. During the 4th round Vitas completed a 22 pointer. I had best direction at the end of the game. Chris got lots of awards; worst movie, best yellow and green. Vitas got best purple. Somehow I finished first.
Me (91), Chris(84), Todd (53), Vitas (52)

Showmanager

Home: Chris was still in the cinema mode by pushing Show Manager. Vitas hadn't play before. I was in flushing mode early in the game. I create a weak yellow show for one purpose only, to extract money from it. Had trouble producing red and it wasn't looking good for me. My draws after the 2nd show seemed to be very lucky. I produced the top green show and luckily produced a decent blue show. Chris was again mythed at losing top spots by one point, which happened to him twice.
Me (48), Chris(47), Vitas (44) Todd (16)

Wiz-war

Home: Chris brought over a copy of Wiz War with several of the expansions. This game is a chaotic game about wizards running around in a maze trying to capture other players' treasure while defending their own. During the first couple of turns Todd and I had stolen each of Chris' treasures. I cast a spell that create a safe for me and placed the treasure in it. I ran over to get Vitas's treasure. Chris was one space away from being eliminated from the game but was able to pick the lock in my safe to retreive his treasure. Meanwhile, Vitas and Todd were fighting over on Todd square. Vitas got hexed with some slow death spell (lose 1/2 hit point per square moved) and he reflected the spell to affect Todd for three turns. Chris was able to return his treasure to a safe spot and create a warp to one of my treasure squares. I gave chase and was able to pick up Chris Treasure but by then Todd had somehow managed to secure a 2nd treasure and there by winning the game. This version of the game seemed to play faster than I remembered. Glad I've rediscovered this old gem.
Todd

12th

Settlers of Catan: City and Knights

Ilise's: Staring Order: John, Dimitri, Me, Ilise
Went over to Ilise and John's how to play Puerto Rico with the new buildings. I suggested doing a half and half random set up. John didn't like that but Ilise thought it was a good idea.

1	2	3	4
Aqueduct	Guesthouse	Factory	Statue
Haceinda	Church	Library	Cloister
Construction Hut	Trading Post	Harbor	City Hall
Sm Warehouse	Lg Warehouse	Union Hall	GuildHall
			Customhouse

John and Dimitri picked up the guesthouse and it seemed to provide lots of flexibility in the early game. Dimitri and I had the library. Ilise and John thought it was too powerful, we on the other hand thought it was just right. Ilise and John had the Aqueduct. Ilise seemed to use it well since she cranked out lots of shipping goods. Ilise was the big shipper scoring 18 point in shipping alone. Everyone else had less than 5 points in shipping. I scored two big buildings for 9 bounus points. John got the cloister but only score 1 bonus point. Dimitri bought the Statue, no bounus but worth 8 points.
Me (36), Ilise (33), Dimitir (25), John (23)

Ilise's: Starting order: Me, Ilise, John, Dimitri First time for Ilise, John and Dimitri. Dimitri was hosed during most of the game. He had no city because it got leveled by a barbarian attack not once but twice in the game. This was a skewed probability game. Nine were rolled a lot and the 8 almost none at all. Ilise had position on the nine tiles and rocked because of that. She had four cities (one of them a trade metro), and three settlements at the end of the game. John had the longest road but other than that he was just like Dimitir and I, wasted.
Ilise (13), John (8), Me (6), Dimitri (5)

120

16th

Acquire

MVGA: My second try at this and the group decided to make a speed game of it. Paul initial acquires turned out to be the growing hotels, so he never got a chance to sell stock. I had a couple of stocks that merged and game me cash.
Walter (57), Greg (31), Me (26), Anton (25), Paul (20)

MVGA: Staring Order: Me, Mike, Walter, Anton
Random half and half.

1	2	3	4
Sm Market	Hospice	Lighthouse	Guildhall
Forest House	Office	Specialty Factory	Residence
Black Market	Lg Market	Harbor	Fortress
Storehouse	Lg Warehouse	Union Hall	Customs House
			Statue

We experienced the power of the Union Hall and warehouse combo. Walter was scoring VP hand over fist. Anton had the lighthouse and union hall but did not generate enough goods to score big points. I went builder strategy with Sm Market, Black Market and Storehouse. I used the Black Market at the end of the game to buy my last building, sacrificing a colonist and a good. The black market is a very useful end game building. At the end I had the Guild Hall and Customs House. Walter picked up the fortress and Residence while Mike bought the Statue.
Walter (68), Me (49), Mike (33), Anton (25)

Euphrat and Tigris

MVGA: I'm really starting to hate this game. Every time I play there is one faction in which I only get a few tiles. Maybe that's the game but it's frustrating. The game started peaceful with everyone claiming a kingdom and trying for a merchant merge to get the gold. Four monuments were placed on the board during the game. There were the typical attacks for monument control. Walter seems to hang on to them the longest.
Walter (10), Me (8), Mike (8), Anton (8)

Union Pacific

MVGA: I was heading out but I was enticed to play UP. We used the second edition rules, which remove Union Pacific from the available draw cards. There fore the only way to get more UP shares is to exchange one share for a UP. I like this method better. Mike started first. The first scoring round happened on the seventh draw. Everybody was playing their own share during the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Most of the competition began after the 3rd scoring round. I had the lead in UP shares, Mike and Rich tied for 2nd and Walter was last. Rich exposed his shares of UP after the 2nd scoring round. The last scoring round came about half way through the deck. Quick game.
Me (121), Mike (108), Walter (106),Rich (102)

17th

King's Gate

Lunch: Lunch: First game for all but me. Craig got a nice run of 4 or 5 location closers, which also gave him some useful tokens. The early game was very cut throat with each player via for location closers. Dimitri and I used our chips early while Craig just sat back and sparingly used his chips.
Craig (33), Scott (19), Dimitri (17), Me(13)

18th

Purchase:Crypt: The Pharaoh's Curse Dungeon Crawl with hexagon tiles, how can I refuse! Two starters two booster ($35)

SoW: SoW: Showed up to SoW to find Constantine, Becky and Adam. Becky had never played SoC and want to learn. Brick look scarce with 8, 3, and 12, so I jumped on 3-1 port on the 8 brick. That was a bad move and I was hamstring for the rest of the game. The battle was between Constantine and Adam with a late rush from Becky. Adam upgraded his four cities and took longest road for the win.
Adam(10), Becky (8), Constantine (7), Me (5)

SoW: SoW: This was Mike's first try. I had six movie, 4 of which were completed but none earned any bonuses. Mike picked up best direction and worst movie. Adam had move of the best picture awards. Constantine only finished two movies.
Adam (84), Kevin (74),Me (53), Becky (51), Constantine (42)

6 Nimmit!

SoW: SoW: I started out strong in this game getting the least points for the first three rounds. After that I made lots of bad plays and gained too many heads. Barely eked out from last place thanks to Constantine massive accumulation of points at the end of the last hand.
Kevin (38), Adam(40), Becky (50), Me(66), Constantine (67)

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

SoW: SoW: Staring Order: Mike, Becky, Adam, Me, ConstantineI tried the factory strategy but Adam did it better. I started by going builder at first. I used corn as my shipping crop and coffee for the money. My initial builds were the small office and coffee roaster. Later I picked up the Office, factory, indigo and sugar but I had a population shortage. I never got the factory to produce more than two extra doubloons. At the end of the game I picked up the Guild Hall and the fortress.
Adam (43), Me (38), Constantine (35), Becky (28), Kevin (25)

18th

Set

SOG: SOG: Went over to the weekend SOG at Chip's house. Initial game was Set, which I had never played. It made my head spin. Sarah was very good at this. Chip was busy greeting guest and he still beat me.
Sarah, Chip, Me

Bohnanza

SOG: SOG: Vitas suggested we all play Bohnanza, I said he was crazy. Too many people to be enjoyable. Chip was making some oddball trades and I was giving cards away. Trading was tough way too many people shout out trades that the active player sometimes got overwhelmed.
Leah (11), Sarah (8), Harlan (7), Nancy (7), Liz (6), Ralph (6), Vitas (6), Chip (3)

SOG: SOG: Leah and Liz wanted to play Caracassone but I only had the H&G version. They agreed to play it anyway. Harlan had never played Carcassonne. Spent a few minutes going over the rules. Leah was doing an excellent job of finishing her forest and rivers. I guess people didn't understand the huts cause only Vitas and I played any. I scored 26 points off of huts and Vitas 1 point. That hut was the only thing that let me catch up to Leah.
Leah (81), Me (81), Harlan (66), Liz (60), Vitas (35)

Dvonn

SOG: SOG: Vitas and I played three game of Dvonn while the rest of the group went to play Dance Dance Revolution, a playstation dancing game. Turns out that Mike and I scored this game wrong. It's the number of chips that a player controls that determines the winner not the number of controlled stacks.
Game 1: Me (21), Vitas (5)
Game 2: Vitas (25), Me (6)
Game 3: Me (11), Vitas (5)

Cave Troll

SOG: SOG: Vitas moved the gaming table to the living room so he could watch the girls dance. I think that's the reason he lost this game. Vitas first draw was the cave troll, which blocked out a five-treasure room. My scoring round happened during my first turn, Vitas was not happy. Nancy and Vitas were very deliberate in drawing and placing, I on the other hand whizzed through my chips. I ended the game, Vitas and Nancy never drew their own scoring chips.
Me (31), Nancy (31), Vitas (16)

Elfenland

SOG: Liz, Leah had never played before. Vitas hates this game. Chip, Sara and I love it. Chip played a blocking tile to hinder Sarah but it actually hurt Leah.
Liz (19-0), Leah (18-6), Sarah (18-6), Chip (18-4), Sara (18-2), Me(18-2), Vitas (18-0)

101

21st

Settlers of Catan: City and Knights

Lunch Time: Lunch Time: A game light on brick. Dimitri got off to an early start with the longest road. I build up on my 6 and 8 forest hexes. Craig just bought development cards like they were going out of style. He easily had the largest army. In the end I was able to build three roads in one turn to connect my looping road to steal longest road from Dimitri. Won with two cities, three settlements, longest road and a dev card VP.
Me (10), Craig (9), Dimitri (4)

Online: Harsh game. I lost my city early and wasn't able to restore it till the end game. I did build longest road and lots of settlements. John got a Metro and took longest road for the victory.
John (13), Lloyd (9), Me (9)

120

22th

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

AL's: Al, Rich and Tufo first play. One river network was heavily contested but Tufo and I shut out Al and Maria with 2 to 1 hut advantage. Rich was happy with his little river network and Al later picked up a decent one. Tufo finished several large forests and had some good hutting. Al picked up the forest fire but Rich had the Stonehenge and merged it into Al's meadow.
Tufo (81), Maria (76), Ralph (66), Rich (64), Al (55)

Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper

Al's: Played a couple of games of Bluff while Maria put the munchkins to bed. Roberto show up during the second game but choose to eat his pizza. Roberto and Maria were ready for the final game. Rich won when Roberto and Dimitri both lost a die to an exact match.
Game 1: Me, Al, Roberto, Tufo, Rich
Game 2: Al, Roberto, Tufo, Rich, Me
Game 3: Rich, Roberto, Dimitri, Ralph, Tufo, Maria, Al

Kill Dr Lucky

Al's: We had three games that could handle seven people. We choose to Kill Dr Lucky. First play for all but me. We had a quick blurb on the rules and Rich was the first to move. Al found this game to be fun but very annoying. We even started discussing on how to make the game better by allowing each player to attempt a murder on other players. Hmmm sounds like a plan. Dimitri suggested reducing the number of failure cards by half. After all was said and done, Dr Lucky died of strangulation.
Me

Abduction

Al's: Chaotic game, lots of hands swapped, discarded and blackouts. I proved extra unlucky by failing every roll. Maria escaped by avoiding a blackout by moving to a random adjacent location, which happened to be an exit.
Maria

22th

Lunch Time: Three hands during lunch at Naked Fish. During the second hand Craig gave me the game when he discarded the ripper escapes. I picked it up, played the last victim and played the Ripper Escapes card. Only the second time I've seen it happen.
Me (58), Holly (61), Craig (37)

El Grande

MVGA: My 2nd game of El Grande, we used the King and Intrigue expansion, in German. argh! What a way to learn German words. Still enjoyed the game but definitely need to play it in English.
Walter and Rich (80s), Anton (70s), Dan (60s), Me (40s)

MVGA: I zoomed to the lead in this game. I had 9 VP (largest army and road) while most people had 4 or 5. The assault on my lead was brutal, 4 on 1. At one point during the game I had 7 cards in my hand and by the time it got back to me I only had two. Mike won with a three-point swing, get a new settlement and taking longest road from me.
Mike (10), Walter (9), Dan and Rich (8), Me (7)

Mystery Rummy 1: Jack the Ripper

MVGA: I got a couple of lucky rolls that allowed me to make outrageous bids. Finished with 4 dice in my hand.
Me, Walter, Rich, Dan, Mike

23rd

Lunch Time: Played a couple of hands during lunch at Harry's II.
Craig (64), Me (41),Dimitri (24)

25th

Purchase:Silverton from Dave B for $20 and my UGV door prize was Frag: Deadlands

UGV: The bi-annual convergence of gamers began with Bluff. Kelli was eager to play a game and Nick pulled out Bluff. Nice loud game to signal the beginning of the day. Jeff went out in one blow by over bidding and getting called on it. After several calls on my part, Campbell was knocked out. Kelli, Nick and I were no match to Rich.
Rich, Kelli, Nick, Me, Campbell, Jeff

Trias

UGV: Trias was my next game after playing a few game of Crokinole with Chris. All players were new to this game. Went over the rules for about 15 minutes. Everyone miss understood one rule, not necessarily the same one. Doug missed the no scoring the south pole mass rule, Bill on dino breeding rules and Karl on tile movement. Don't remember what Alec misunderstood. Karl was into splitting and score islands. I dominated several large islands and placed second on a few more.
Me (20), Karl (19), Bill and Alec (14), Doug (12)

UGV: Tried to avoid Puerto Rico tournament so I could join the Age of Steam game. Kyle and Campbell went Factory strategy, Brain Corn Shipping and I was doing a builder. Kyle had the factory with in the third turn. I got two building but did no shipping. ugh!
Kyle (58), Campbell (52), Brian (49), Me (35)

Elfenland

UGV: Spent sometime watch/advising Chris on Age of Steam. I was drifting around the hall went Chip pulled me into his game that was just getting started. Peter and Kaj were new to the game. Peter did well considering that he only picked up 3 in the first round. I had a horrible third turn were I didn't have the right chips to my cards.
Kaj (19 closest to Elvenhold), Chip (19), Sarah(19), Ralph (17), Peter (16)

Princes of Florence

UGV: This game plays different with four. I got burnt because I devoted too many actions getting personality cards instead of purchasing my necessary items for my works.
Dan (68), Chris (64), Joe (62), Me (51)