Session Report November 29 - Piranhas Eat Penguins

Session report November 29

Hey, that's my fish! (BSW) - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill - Winner Bill
Hey, that's my fish! (BSW) - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill, Karen - Winner Pete
Piranha Pedro - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill, Karen - Looser: Beth
Piranha Pedro - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill, Karen - Looser: Bill

Long live the VBGG! 5 players showed up for a regular Wednesday night session. Coming into the winter season, we should see regular activity for the next few months (if we can make it through Xmas, that is...)

We started with some warm up as everyone got online with Hey, that's my fish! on BSW. It's interesting to see people get better at strategy and tactics on this game the more we play.

-- kayakpete erreichte 19 Punkte, davon 4 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 10 Plättchen).
-- magennis erreichte 21 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 13 Plättchen).
-- fineltour erreichte 26 Punkte, davon 4 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 15 Plättchen).
-- Lamork erreichte 30 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 19 Plättchen).
-- Unparalleled, Lamork won the game with 30 points. (9:50 min.)
-- Klasse, Lamork hat das Match mit 1 Siegen gewonnen.(Distanz: 1)

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by kayakpete; with 4 players).
-- kayakpete erreichte 33 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 20 Plättchen).
-- magennis erreichte 14 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 10 Plättchen).
-- Lamork erreichte 24 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 15 Plättchen).
-- fineltour erreichte 25 Punkte, davon 5 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 12 Plättchen).
-- kayakpete won the game considerably. The victory was with 33 points. (9:26 min.)
-- Klasse, kayakpete hat das Match mit 1 Siegen gewonnen.(Distanz: 1)

It's too bad you can't actually MAKE a penguin jump off an ice flow. Wait.. I think there's a game that would fulfill this desire...

Enter Piranha Pedro! We were at a loss as to what to play next. Pete decided to give Piranha Pedro a go. A quick read of the rules and we were ready to go. Well, not quite. Dana's computer decided hosting the Skype session AND loading Java was just a bit too much, and decided to have a fit. We fired up a game to learn the interface while he rebooted.

Piranha Pedro's a simple game where you try to guess what your opponents will do, and make your move accordingly. It's a game of bluffing, guessing, and card counting. We had a delightful time trying to keep Pedro out of the water, and piranhas! This game plays well with the sound on (command: /sound on), as opposed to other squacky games. There's not a lot of depth to it, and it plays fairly quickly. I think it's a great filler game for the VBGG. At this point, I'd say better than Hey, that's my fish!. Here's the scores and play times. Note that the first game wasn't counted as Pete threw the game to let Dana get back in.

• -- The victory of Amazon4God, magennis und Lamork was planned pointedly and ended with 2 points. (11:27 min.)

• -- Unparalleled, Amazon4God, Lamork, fineltour und kayakpete won the game with 2 points. (21:43 min.)

• -- 1 points let Amazon4God, kayakpete, magennis und fineltour grab the whole thing impressively! (14:27 min.)

Long live Pedro! Long live the VBGG!

Session Report Nov 22 - Turkey Train

Session report Nov 22
Ticket To Ride (US) - Dana, Pete - Winner Pete
Ticket To Ride (europe) - Dana, Pete - Winner Pete
Ticket To Ride (europe) - Collin, Beth, Dana, Pete - Winner Dana

3 Games off T2R to take it easy before the Thanksgiving weekend break. Pete trounced Dana with the "build it long and fast" strategy. It seems that you can steal an end game turn or two from your opponent by doing this. In the end game, Dana was stuck needing another turn or two. Pete made a loop east to west, across the bottom of the map, and back through the middle.

Game two on the Europe board, and Pete stuck to build quick, make points, and don't take lots of tickets strategy once again. A bit closer this time, and Pete drained his train yard just one turn before Dana could close more stuff. Another win for Pete

Beth and Collin joined in for the last game of the night on the Europe map. Collin couldn't get cars to the cities he needed, but was the leader on points coming into endgame. The Stockholm 8 length tunnel will do that for ya! Beth and Collin, new to the board, figured out how to build tunnels. The hard way. ;-)

In the end Dana trounced quite handily by using no stations, having only 3 tickets, and well played track. Going out first is a great bonus. He did so and smashed everyone is score.

Woooooo wooo! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Session Report Nov 8 - Spicy Meeples

Session report Nov 8
Hey, that's my fish - Bill, Karen, Bart, Pete
Carcassonne Princess and Dragon - Dana, Bill, Karen, Bart, Pete
- Winners Bill, Bart

We decided to get Bart into the BSW, and played a quick game of Hey, that's my fish! Bill captured a nice flow to himself, giving him a win by 8 points over Pete. Hey, that's my Fish! is a 4 player game max on BSW

-- kayakpete erreichte 26 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 16 Plättchen).
-- Lamork erreichte 34 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 18 Plättchen).
-- Amazon4God erreichte 18 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 12 Plättchen).
-- hawkeye00 erreichte 20 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 12 Plättchen).
-- Greatly, Lamork obliterated the opposition with 34 points. (12:42 min.)
-- Klasse, Lamork hat das Match mit 1 Siegen gewonnen.(Distanz: 1)

Ok, we couldn't figure out what to play, so we played Carcassonne, Princess and Dragon. Time to eat meeples! With 5 players, the scores stay low, meeples get eaten, and lots of down time. Long game!

Pete had 2 points for a good part of the game until the fairy came to hang with him for 3 turns or so. Much fighting over fields that was only made more complex with the dragon swooping in to mix it up. Fun! The climax of the game was a huge field being left barren of farmers due to dragon. Karen was up and got a full 4-side city tile, so she couldn't take the field! Next up pete pulls a princess tile and can't take the field either! GAA! Bill takes and holds the big field for 27 points, but it's not enough to topple Bart.

Bart wins, but there is some question as to how it scored. Pete had 46 points in second place after scoring greatly for cloisters.

-- kayakpete scored 16 points during the game, and in the final scoring 10 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 14 points for cloisters, 6 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- Lamork scored 10 points during the game, and in the final scoring 0 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 0 points for cloisters, 27 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- hawkeye00 scored 29 points during the game, and in the final scoring 2 points for roads, 6 points for cities, 7 points for cloisters, 12 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- fineltour scored 12 points during the game, and in the final scoring 3 points for roads, 12 points for cities, 7 points for cloisters, 9 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- Amazon4God scored 20 points during the game, and in the final scoring 2 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 0 points for cloisters, 9 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- If hawkeye00 hadn't gotten 56 points, then the game wouldn't have ended so incredibly victoriously. (99:45 min.)

Fun Game!

Next week will find Pete in Hawaii, so carry on without him!

Session Report Nov 1 - Settlers of Europe by Train

Session report Nov 2
Ticket To Ride (2) - Bart, Bill, Dana, Pete
Catan (Standard) - Beth, Karen, Collin
- Winners Bart, Pete,

Don checks in to tell us of his new new toy, a
1958 Chrysler Biscayne fully restored. Congrat's on the new
baby, Don!
More picks on photobucket.




We read the rules and played Ticket To Ride Europe, for the first time! Bart had played once or twice before, but didn't have all the rules memorized. We figured it out, and found the strategy and tactics to be quite different than Ticket To Ride.

Tunnels make it quite interesting. Once you build a tunnel, you draw 3 cards. If any of them are wild or the color you used to build the tunnel, then you have to pay up more! The luck factor is slightly annoying, but it does add a bit of excitement to the track building.

Bart pulled a nice score on completing lots of cards to win game 1 pretty nicely. There was tremendous bunching in the south-east corner of the map that made for an odd game (or so we thought, despite it being our first go on this map). Pete was a huge looser, with lots of cars in the yard. Dana pulled a respectable second place.

Game two saw the players a bit more spread out. Some minor conflicts around Germany. Pete, however, sneaked a longest train (using all his cars), and the Stokholm 8 length 21 point tunnel in the end to leave everyone short a turn or two. The early game end strategy, plus high score tracks, plus complete of only 3 cards, gave Pete a nice win. Strategy pays off two weeks in a row.

Dana picked off second place again. A contender!

In the other table, Karen, Beth and Collin played a somewhat relaxed a standard settlers game. A close game, with Karen 9, Beth 9, Collin 10! Beth calls it "the game of stupidity".

Finally, we did a quick run-through on how to log in to BSW and get a game started. Pete updated the link on this page to better connect to the bsw, and showed Beth and Karen how to start up and join a game.

-- Amazon4God erreichte 23 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 13 Plättchen).
-- magennis erreichte 15 Punkte, davon 3 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 9 Plättchen).
-- IceFire2112 erreichte 32 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 18 Plättchen).
-- kayakpete erreichte 29 Punkte, davon 2 Punkte in der Endwertung ( 19 Plättchen).
-- Now IceFire2112 has won outstanding with 32 points! (11:58 min.)
-- Klasse, IceFire2112 hat das Match mit 1 Siegen gewonnen.(Distanz: 1)

Sher Gut!