Session Report - April 30 2008 - Spring and sprung and the indigo is blooming

Greetings!

San Juan-

Dana, Lisa, Brian and Pete sat down to a couple games of San Juan.

Pete shows off his skill learned from many games of race for the galaxy.


-- danar erreichte 24 SP, davon 6 SP durch Gebaeude und 8 SP durch grosse Gebaeude. Kapelle: 10
-- kayakpete erreichte 34 SP, davon 23 SP durch Gebaeude und 11 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- brynna erreichte 27 SP, davon 15 SP durch Gebaeude und 12 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- brian7 erreichte 30 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 8 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Greatly, kayakpete won the game with 34 points. (31:23 min.)

Game 2, and they get it in gear!

-- brian7 erreichte 41 SP, davon 24 SP durch Gebaeude und 17 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- danar erreichte 38 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 16 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- brynna erreichte 29 SP, davon 19 SP durch Gebaeude und 10 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- kayakpete erreichte 31 SP, davon 21 SP durch Gebaeude und 10 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Isn't it great how brian7 won the game so distinguishedly with 41 points? (31:16 min.)

Game 3 Woah! Danar cooks up 3 silver mines, with the library. Wow Look at this score:

-- danar erreichte 44 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 22 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Lamork erreichte 26 SP, davon 26 SP durch Gebaeude und 0 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- brynna erreichte 35 SP, davon 18 SP durch Gebaeude und 17 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- kayakpete erreichte 32 SP, davon 18 SP durch Gebaeude und 14 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- If danar hadn't gotten 44 points, then the game wouldn't have ended so overwhelmingly victoriously. (33:40 min.)

Fun fun!

Session Report: April 16 - Spring as sprung, so have the pirates

Greetings!

It's a beautiful day outside, but the sun went down, so we are gamin!


Table 1:

Cartagena -

Brian taught us Cartagena, and Pete had actually played it on the table top last weekend.

-- brian7 reached a score of 36.
-- danar reached a score of 26.
-- kayakpete reached a score of 12.
-- The game went extraordinarily, and produced brian7 as the winner with 36 points. (24:19 min.)

Thurn and Taxis -

This one Pete's played on the table top too, but never on BSW. So we did! Brian did well for having never played before. Pete did terrible for having played before!

We all agreed that this one could be played over and over.

-- 29 points let danar grab the whole thing greatly! (53:41 min.)

Dana 29
Brian 18
Pete 3

Pete sucks.

Table 2:

Ticket To Ride -

Bill Lisa Karen - Bill Wins
Bill Lisa Karen - Karen Wins
Bill Lisa Karen - DumbBot Wins!

Pete is interviewed in Pulp Gamer Podcast

Check out the interview with Pete at Pulp Gamer. Pete's a moderator for the Catan Online World. The guys at Pulp Gamer interviewed the new moderators of the English rollout of the popular online implementation of Catan.

Session Report April 2 2008 - Have fun building the cathedral!

Table 1: Pillars of the Earth

VERY close game. Dana tried for the Gold strategy again, but his opponents were a little more together this week. Pete went for generic production, but got the bell maker in the end for an extra 8 points.

Remember. Every VP counts. Every one.

-- But will Lamork win the next game so phenomenally with 49 points? (68:15 min.)
Bill 49 (with 5 gold)
Pete 49 (and 4 gold)
Brian 44
Dana 43

Table 2: San Juan two player

Collin and Karen played San Juan

Game 1:

Collin won the first one 40 to 28.

Game 2:

-- IceFire2112 erreichte 32 SP, davon 18 SP durch Gebaeude und 14 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Amazon4God erreichte 38 SP, davon 19 SP durch Gebaeude und 19 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- The game went without equal, and produced Amazon4God as the winner with 38 points. (26:22 min.)

Marmalade Dog 2008 - GameFest Report

Good day!

Here's a special treat for you - A report by Dana on our recent day spent at the Marmalade Dog game fest in Kalamazoo, MI:

Greetings all, hope everyone had a good weekend, I know we had a great time down at Marmdog. A quick report :

Despite a much smaller con than previous years (probably half as big as last year), there were plenty of board game and things going on. We arrived early (9:30 ish) and did a quick recon of the room before getting down to some games.

Fire and Axe : Ben and I started out by playing a Viking settlement type game with a demo-er. Interesting game where you trade, pillage and settle Europe. I focused on trade and settling while Ben went after the trophy for “Bloodiest Axe”. I pulled out a strong victory, but we both enjoyed the game. It did seem a bit long coming in at 2 hours, though repeated play would probably reduce that to 90 minutes. (Why can’t people come up with good/quick demo versions?) Winner: Me. My Rank : 8/10 (Ben gave it a 7 due to length.)

Evo : Pete and his kids showed up and we tried out a Mayfair game for the kids. The player’s all start with one dinosaur and begin shifting around a Catan-like board looking for a comfortable terrain while reproducing. Every round, you get points for the number of your dinosaurs and then spend them on evolution tiles in hopes of surviving better until a time track runs out. The constantly changing climate can easily wipe out massive numbers of dinos. The biggest factor here was careful timing of “special” cards which allow you to really warp the game. Examples including “Tough babies” (you can attack with your newborn babies), climate cards (that change the climate or your ability to survive it) and others. The kids really seemed to like the fact that as you purchase evolution cards, they get placed upon a picture of your species in increasingly improbable fashion (like Danny’s six legged dino or another that I saw with a tail half a mile long). Ben liked it enough to play another game with another father/son team that was there. Winner : Ben and I tied and then Ben won his second game. Rank 7/10 (Ben gave it a 10).

SPANC: Bill, Karen, Pete and I tried out Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls. With really hot, fun art by Phil Folgio! What’s not to like? Well, the game play mostly. The guy teaching us was pretty awful too, but it was the gameplay that I really disliked. You get 4 catgirls at random with 4 stats. Four challenges come up each round and you pick one catgirl to give the challenges a try. Roll on a couple dice to get under your stats (with “Toys” giving you bonuses to stats). Defeating challenges (particularly all 4 before anyone else can) gives you Toys and loot and Poolboys (who are Loot and Toy). I miss Xenophile, a game with really hot artwork and an actual fun gameplay. Winner : Me. My Rank : 3/10

Pandemic : Pete had to go soon, but we tried out a couple games of Pandemic before he left. Five deadly viruses are spreading across the globe and you have to work as a team to defeat them. Fast and fun game. Every round, you act to stop the diseases and then reveal two additional cities where viruses pop up. One of the most interesting aspects was that at four points in the game, the discard pile of cities where the virus appears reshuffles and then gets placed back on top of the draw pile. So, the same cities keep coming up until you can cure that particular disease. First game we thought we were winning until we suddenly realized we lost and then realized we’d actually won a few turns earlier. Second game, we lost by a turn or two. I think this one’s a winner, even though we kept losing. My Rank 8.5/10

Cleopatra’s Palace [Cleopatra and the Society of Architects - SIC] : Pete left, so Bill, Karen and I decided to play a quick game while waiting for Lisa to finish her RPG game. I am a huge cheapass fan. Fancy pieces are fine, but I prefer good game play. Still, we tried out Cleopatra’s Palace which has a very nice setup with big plastic pieces to resemble columns, sphinxes mosaics and obelisks. It’s a basic collect cards and build stuff game. We were actually talking about how boring it was DURING the game. One interesting aspect is you can build more easily if you’re willing to accept a little corruption and every time you build, there’s a chance that a sacrifice must be made (giving up victory points but the person who gives up the most victory points reduces his # of corruption tokens). I easily built the most due to a reckless willingness to corrupt myself thinking that I’d just outbid my rivals and reduce that corruption. Never happened. So I went into the end with as much corruption as a New York City politician. Which means that at the end of the game, I get fed to crocodiles before calculating the winner. I had a 40 point lead in victory points, but those crocodiles were not impressed. Winner Karen. My Rank : 5/10.

Pitstop : No idea. Ben played this game and said it was very good.

[Is is referring to Pitchcar Mini]

We picked up a little dinner and then played a tabletop 7^th Sea game set in Florida while Ben watched a movie on the DVD player we brought. More crocodiles! A couple of my tweaks seem to work out pretty well. Florida works out as a nice setting.

Bill and Karen took off, but we hung out for a little while and shopped (Four boxes of Crimson Sky for $1!?). Talked to Eric (Squirrel boy). Won 12 sets of Heroclix for $7 at the charity auction. Then home again, home again. Overall, it was a fun little con.