Session Report December 20 - Does Santa play Risk?

Dana Discovered Invade Earth, a online multi-player version of Risk 2210. Risk 2210 is one of the group favorites when it comes to table-top play. It's great to add this to the VBGG game shelf!

Invade Earth plays pretty much just like Risk 2210. Benefits typical to boardgames ported to online play are seen, such as easy dice rolling, and accounting. We managed to play two full rounds without to much problem with the interface. Most exciting, game-play wise is the ability to have private side-bar chats with players. This could really make diplomacy a lethal tactic. Karen should love that.

Since this was our first go with Invade Earth, we mostly left strategy in the closet. Everyone pretty much controlled a continent after initial army placement except for Dana, who was playing last. Yeah, well, it wasn't about winning . It was about learning the interface.

That's easy for me to say, seeing as I started with a solid hold on Australia, with a couple countries deep of defense. After two rounds I was in pretty good shape. Something tells me that I won't have that luxury next time.

Play time looks like it will be quicker, as game chores will be sped up greatly. We think, however, that a single game will still take more than a the regimented VBGG game session of two hours. But that's OK! A save game option is included that will allow us to play a single game over multiple sessions

Session Report December 13 - Go west Engineer! No, East!

Transamerica (Bill, Dana, Marc, Pete) - Winner Bill
Transamerica (Dana, Marc, Pete) - Winner Dana
Transamerica (Dana, Marc, Pete) - Winner Dana


Welcome back Marc, after a lengthly hiatus for the VBGG. Good to have you back!

We were thinking about it, and we decided to go for it - Transamerica on Brettspielwelt.

In Transamerica players actually build tracks that are used TOGETHER. This is opposite of Ticket2Ride where my track is mine, and yours is yours. The trick is to take advantage of your opponents track building, allowing you to connect your cities first. You have 5 secret cities to connect, one in each area of the country. So do your opponents. Take your turn. You can build two tracks (or 1 red track (mountains and rivers). One a single player has all of their cities connected, the round ends. Everyone else finishes out their tracks, and subtracts 1 (or 2) per track built to finish! The game ends when someone reaches 0.

Bill tapped into his vast tome of rail-building knowledge (eurorails, iron dragon, yada yada) to kick serious butt in Game 1:

- Wow, Lamork just put it away with 11 points. Pointedly. (45:21 min.)

Ok. So we were noobs. It took a while. Bill had to bow out so Karen could use the computer. So we were left to try again. This time it went quicker, with Marc really figuring it out. Too bad Dana had figured it out as well. He took game 2:

-- Excellently, fineltour dominated the game with 10 points. (14:55 min.)

Pete has yet, at this point to even win a single round. (and thus the quick game #2) It's starting to remind him of the Ticket To Ride game last week. Well, in that game he could at least blame his opponents for taking his routes. Not this time. Well, even all the friendly track around wasn't enough to get Pete back on (track) for game 3. Dana and Marc took commanding leads, and battled it out closely as Pete managed to make it a speedy game by beeing the big l00zer again. In the end Dana eeked out a win over Marc by a slim 2 points.

-- fineltour won outstanding with 8 points. (22:26 min.)

Transamerica is a really nice game. Quick and easy to play. It will work well as a camp game with the kids for sure. Plays much quicker than Ticket2Ride, and has some excellent strategy (and a bit of luck). Pete "just happened" to pick up a discount copy today off Tanga. ;-) We'll see it hit the table sometime this winter. Good, as it plays up to 6 players!

Dana and Pete agreed that it was more fun than Clans. I think it probably has more staying power than Piranha Pedro as well.

Read up on Transamerica on the Brettspielwelt English Info site .

See you next week!

New online Settlers of Catan

Good evening VBGG'ers!

Bill just came across Cities3D , the next version of Sea3d, that we have been using as our online Settlers of Catan server and client.

Cities3D supports all expansions of Settlers, including the newest Cities and Knights of Catan! This is a tremendous expansion for the original game, and changes game play greatly. The interface has been spiffied up to look prettier as well. GOOD STUFF!

Be sure to take a moment to download and install the new version. It's easy!

Download: Cities3D v0.9 Installer

See you online!

Session Report December 6 - Boys Win

Session report December 6

Piranha Pedro - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill, Karen - Looser: Beth
Piranha Pedro - Pete, Beth, Dana, Bill, Karen - Looser: Karen
Ticket To Ride (US) - Beth, Karen, Bill, DAna, Pete. Winner Dana
Ticket To Ride (EU) - Collin, Karen, Bill, DAna, Pete. Winner Bill


Good night for da boyz, it was. Piranha Pedro two games LOST by the two girls. Two more games of Ticket To Ride won by the boys.

Special note. Pete lost the T2R EU game badly. He's such a girl. He, however, blames everyone else for taking his track. What a boy.

Next week we hope to add another interesting game to the mix. Taking suggestions. Take a look at the BSW games listed at The BSW English Help Page.

BrikMechWar

Overview

Brik Mech War (BMW) is a miniature battle game, with the minis created out of Legos! The game is designed for easy play, specifically by young lego builders in the 6-10 year old range. The theme of the game revolves around Mechs (Mechwarriors)doing battle. While this the theme has already been ported to a lego platform in a game called Mechaton, I wanted to design a game that was a little simpler, and required less dice. We also wanted to work with my son and nephew, taking into account their ideas.

Check out the BrikMechWar Rules!