Session Report: May 16 - Paso Fino in San Juan

San Juan (Bill, Karen, Dana, Pete) Winner Dana
San Juan (Beth, Collin, Karen, Pete) Winner Beth

While Liz clicks on Paso Fino links, we fire up a game of San Juan. Just 4 players, but that's all that are here! We get into it with a bit of "hey, it's your turn", and a bit of open strategy conversations. As we play online, we realize that you can't really tell if people know it's their turn. Are they looking at the board, or are they busy petting their cat (or ukulele). "Hey, it's your turn!" is a common phrase heard on Skype.

Karen pressures with quick builds, seemingly looking to end the game before others are ready (a common Pete strategy, used in Ticket to Ride). But -

-- Amazon4God erreichte 27 SP, davon 21 SP durch Gebaeude und 6 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- fineltour erreichte 39 SP, davon 23 SP durch Gebaeude und 16 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- kayakpete erreichte 22 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 0 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Lamork erreichte 24 SP, davon 17 SP durch Gebaeude und 7 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- fineltour won the game brilliant. The victory was with 39 points. (50:44 min.)

But it's not enough. Pete thinks people should make thinking sounds as they take their turn, just so the other players know they are actually paying attention.

"Hmm.... mmmm..."

"Hey, it's your turn Pete!"

"I know, didn't you hear me thinking?"

Woo woo!

Maybe this time is a good time to mention Moritz Eggert's "Black Pawn" curse. Listen to The Dice Tower Episode 93. Moritz talks about his Cursed Black Pawn at 30 minutes into the show - The Black Arpat. Great, great stuff.

I hope you can get a chance to listen to Moritz describe the Black Arpat.

Game two! The girls are all over this game. Beth's first game, but she seems to pick it up just fine, stomping with perfecture followed by silver. Karen built silver first, and kept her flush in cards.

-- magennis erreichte 39 SP, davon 24 SP durch Gebaeude und 15 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- IceFire2112 erreichte 20 SP, davon 16 SP durch Gebaeude und 4 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- kayakpete erreichte 25 SP, davon 14 SP durch Gebaeude und 11 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Amazon4God erreichte 37 SP, davon 19 SP durch Gebaeude und 18 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- magennis won the game in an exemplary fashion. The victory was with 39 points. (53:54 min.)

wee woo! We all agree that San Juan is a rightly fun game. Especially with our current appreciation of Puerto Rico, it's nice to be able to play this online.

Session Report: May 9 2007 - Fearsome Floors!

Fearsome Floors (Dana, Collin, Beth, Karen, Bill, Pete) - Winner: Dana
Fearsome Floors (Dana, Collin, Beth, Karen, Bill, Pete) - Winner: Dana

Hey, that's entertaining. Fearsome Floors is a game where the players move their poor victims through a dungeon, trying to evade the monster that will eat 'em.

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by fineltour; with 6 players).
-- These game options are active: invisible.
-- If fineltour hadn't gotten 2 points, then the game wouldn't have ended so classy victoriously. (63:41 min.)

Ok. We try again.

Discovered that it is a very good strategy NOT to cluster your dudes together. Them's that stay together get eaten together.

Bill, Dana, Pete all went out, but Dana got 3 out!

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by fineltour; with 6 players).
-- These game options are active: invisible.
IceFire2112: oh jeez, i'm crying!!!
-- Now fineltour has won masterfully with 3 points! (52:29 min.)

We all had a good laugh with this one. It's strategy might be a little basic, but it is different than , say, Pedro. Good fun!

Session Report: May 2 2007 - Sailing to San Juan

Tonga (Pete, Bill, Karen, Dana) - Winner Pete
San Juan (Pete, Bill, Karen, Dana) - Winner Pete

Spring time! Time to think about water sports, like sailing. Like maybe sailing to Tongiaki!

Tongiaki

-- kayakpete won extraordinarily with 36 points. (35:13 min.)

Nuff said?


In honor of May Day, a big party in Puerto Rico, we played San Juan next:

SanJuan

Gamemaster: fineltour sits at position number 1.
Gamemaster: kayakpete sits at position number 2.
Gamemaster: Amazon4God sits at position number 3.
Gamemaster: Lamork sits at position number 4.

-- fineltour erreichte 30 SP, davon 26 SP durch Gebaeude und 0 SP durch grosse Gebaeude. Kapelle: 4
-- kayakpete erreichte 37 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 15 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Amazon4God erreichte 30 SP, davon 15 SP durch Gebaeude und 15 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Lamork erreichte 25 SP, davon 20 SP durch Gebaeude und 5 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Brilliantly, kayakpete won the game with 37 points. (49:54 min.)

Pete really liked the game. But maybe that's because he won. Bill and Pete both would like to try this on the tabletop. Too bad it's only 4 player. I won't see much action on the VBGG, unless we scale to two games.

50 minutes isn't a bad time for a first-go on a game.

Gabaeude is buildings, and grosse Gabaeude is the big buildings, or buildings with question marks.

Session Report April 25 2007 - The bumpy Caylus road

Piranna Pedro - Bill, Dana, Collin and Beth
Piranna Pedro - Bill, Dana, Collin and Beth
Piranna Pedro - Bill, Dana, Collin and Beth
Caylus - Bill, Dana, Collin, Karen and Beth

Whilst Pete snoozed, the games went on. Bill reports on this week's fun:

3 games Piranna Pedro,Bill Dana Collin and Beth, waiting for Pete and Karen to show up.

Game One - Boy, that was fast -

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by Lamork; with 4 players).
Pio erscheint ploetzlich aus dem nichts.
Pio loest sich in Luft auf.
-- Extraordinarily, fineltour, magennis und Lamork obliterated the opposition with 2 points. (6:10 min.)

Game Two - Two points? Is that good or bad? I don't remember.

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by IceFire2112; with 4 players).
-- But will Lamork, magennis und IceFire2112 win the next game so impressively with 2 points? (5:21 min.)
Lamork verlässt das Haus hinaus nach Smallville
Lamork tritt durch die Tür in das Haus.

Game 3 - Bill went swimming?

Gamemaster: magennis sits at position number 3.
Gamemaster: IceFire2112 sits at position number 4.
Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by IceFire2112; with 4 players).
-- In an exemplary manner, IceFire2112, magennis und fineltour obliterated the opposition with 2 points. (9:32 min.)

And then they moved on to, of all things, Caylus! Can you believe Pete slept through the VBGG's first attempt at Caylus online? Serves him right for being such a lazy bum.

Then to Caylus as Karen shows up
No Pete?
Skype keeps dropping Karen all night, then finally BSW drops Karen 1/3rd of the way through the Caylus match. Caylus is less forgiving on reconnecting.
It was 10:40 and we decided to call the game. Karen was in the lead, with everyone else but Collin close on her heals.

Thanks to Bill for the report. See you next week!

Session Report: April 18 2007 - Ozzy would be Proud

We went off the rails on a Crazy Train tonight, with a few rounds of Trans America. It was lots of fun!

Transamerica (Bill, Karen, Dana, Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Bill
Transamerica (Bill, Karen, Dana, Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Collin
Transamerica (Bill, Karen, Dana, Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Karen
Transamerica (Bill, Karen, Dana, Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Pete
Transamerica (Bill, Karen, Dana, Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Dana


Transamerica Game 1:

Pete lost the first round horribly, but won the next two, but wasn't enough. Lost to Bill by one point.

-- Without Lamork's 7 points, the game may never have ended so enormously. (13:51 min.)
Bill 7
Pete 6
Karen 0
Data 0

Transamerica Game 2:

Collin is out of the gates with two rounds won, but then hosed it on the third round. But everyone's still in! one more round. In the end Collin rocks.

-- Fantastically, IceFire2112 dominated the game with 6 points. (27:10 min.)
Pete 3
Dana 3
Bill 4
Karen 0
Collin 6
Beth 3

Transamerica Game 3:

For game game 3 Dana suggests some house rules! Each round you must start in the same color city. We started on east, then to south east, north then middle. AND THEN green west! Lots of rounds. Crazy! Karen got it in the end.

Dana 0
Bill 3
Collin 1
Beth 1
Karen 8
Pete 5

Transamerica Game 4:

Holy cow. House variant again. Take a look at this score. Nuf Said. Quote form Beth: "But I had NINE!", commenting on the fact that she was kicking our butt into the final round. Look at these crazy scores -

Dana 0
Bill 0
Collin 1
Beth 0
Karen 0
Pete 3

Transamerica Game 5:

House variant, but this time Dana whomped our butts. He wins the first two rounds handily and finishes fine in the final round to take a commanding win.

Dana 12
Collin 4
Beth 0
Bill 4
Karen 7
Pete 5

This was quite an entertaining session. Everyone had lots of fun.

Session Report April 11 2007 - Snowing on Catan

Settlers of Catan (Cities 3d 5 islands) Collin, Beth, Karen, Bill, Pete - Winner Beth


We got a nice big game using the the Cities3D interface. We thought we saw a couple bugs, but we managed to finish the game. We agreed that it would probably be better to stick with sea3d until cities3d moves forward a version or 3. Most notable was some turn skips (possible user errors, however) and the error message that pops up every time someone builds a city.

We played 5 islands, with every one pretty much staking out an island with one settlement, then invading someone else's with another. Pete was on the middle island. Early on, Pete held a good lead, but couldn't convert it in end game. The key is to set sail for the other islands, to get the landfall settlement victory point. Pete didn't, and it killed him.

The Fickle Finger of Fate poked Collin but good. A few turns of poor resource production allowed his nearby opponents to move into his space. Bitter was he. He actually made a decent showing given the dice cast him. But you can only go so far with limited land and resources.

Beth was a bit vested in 6's. And it paid off as 6's seemed to come up a lot. We missed the statistics chart that sea3d offers. End game saw Beth starting her turns with LOTS of resources. One turn with 27! With that kind of stockpile, it's no problem to keep your longest road and build a quick settlement for the win.

The game seemed to run a bit long. I think we need to play settlers a bit more, as we seemed to be a bit slow.

We also need to put some more miles on Bill's Cities and Knights of Catan expansion!

Pete is actively looking at the other BSW games. There are several more complex games that may be quite enjoyable for the VBGG. Given our normal 5-6 player group, that cuts out a bunch of the 4-player games....

Until next week!

VBGG UNPLUGGED - April 3 2003

Yes, we've done it! We've had our first VBGG-sanctioned gaming session! It's spring break week, and anyone that was unlucky enough to go on a vacation or had to work missed a fun day of gaming at Pete's house.

It's spring in West Michigan. The snow was deep on the ground, and it's too cold to go outside. Looks like it was going to be a White Easter. And it was.

Pete opened the doors of his home to any VBGG gamers that wanted to sit down and play. Beth showed up and played games all day, with several others coming in the afternoon and evening.

The Attendees:

Beth
Pete
Ben (Bart's son)
Collin
Bill
Karen
Dana
Katie (Pete's daughter)
Bart
Patrick
Gayle
Liz

The Games:

Nexus Ops
Cabndamir: The First Settlers
Tongiaki
Scrabble
Shadows over Camelot


Everyone was winners on a fun-filled game fest. Thanks to everyone that showed up to play games and visit. It was a really nice day.

SEE you next year!!!

- Pete

Session Report: March 28, 2007. Yay for the other guys.

Session Report March 28 2007

Ra - Pete, Collin, Bill, Beth - Winner: Collin
Ra - Pete, Collin, Bill, Beth, Karen - Winner: Karen

Ah, Ra. Fine game. Fine fine fine. How much is the luck of the draw, versus the smarts of your bids? I can't say. I can barely click in the right place on this day.

Game 1 started out on fire for Pete, but it went down from there. Bill started in the dumps but came back. In the end Collin wins the tie with Bill.

Much enjoyment was had.

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by kayakpete; with 4 players).
-- These game options are active: invisible.
-- kayakpete scores 16 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 7 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 5 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores 0 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 5 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 4 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 5 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

Amazon4God Reality cracks in half as Amazon virtually appears.
magennis: i like your tag line karen

-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 7 (Total: 33) points.
-- IceFire2112 scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 24 (Total: 46) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 32 (Total: 46) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 16 (Total: 36) points.

-- IceFire2112 won outstanding with 46 points. (31:55 min.)

In the second game, both Pete and Bill click on the wrong spot. They must be trying to let the others have a chance at winning. Bill is that kind of guy. And Pete, sometimes, would just rather play the uke, than win. Well, that's his excuse, and he's sticking with it.

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by kayakpete; with 5 players).
-- These game options are active: invisible.
-- kayakpete scores -2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 13 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 5 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 4 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores 6 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores -3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 7 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 11 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 6 (Total: 20) points.
-- Amazon4God scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 24 (Total: 50) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 15 (Total: 22) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 27 (Total: 49) points.
-- IceFire2112 scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 13 (Total: 38) points.

-- Amazon4God won phenomenally with 50 points. (39:58 min.)

Karen just eeks Bill out by one point in the end.

Cheers!

A little game

Session Report: March 21, 2007. First day of Spring in Catan.

Settlers of Catan (standard, BSW) - Winner Collin

A close game, with Karen and Pete close to 10 points, but Collin stole longest road from Karen for the win.

-- 10 points let IceFire2112 grab the whole thing outstandingly! (98:48 min.)

First time we tried the BSW Catan interface. Not bad. Not as nice as Cities3D, but ok to play.

We did get cities3d tested and running well. We should be set to go on that next time. Assuming everyone has downloaded and installed it.

Short report this week. Sorry!

Session Report: March 14 2007 - Jump left. No, your other left!

Piranha Pedro (Beth, Bill, Karen, Pete) LOOSER Karen
Piranha Pedro (Collin, Bill, Karen, Pete) LOOSER Bill
Piranha Pedro (Collin, Bill, Karen, Pete) LOOSER Bill
Piranha Pedro (Collin, Bill, Karen, Pete) LOOSER Bill

Sorry! Been a bit delayed getting the report out. I forgot to write it!

I hope I logged the Piranha Pedro session correctly. Here you go!

Karen Looses :
-- Without magennis, Lamork und kayakpete's 2 points, the game may never have ended so considerably. (16:28 min.)


Bill Looses:
-- But will IceFire2112, Amazon4God und kayakpete win the next game so famously with 2 points? (6:52 min.)

Bill Looooser:
Pete is an idoit and jumps on his own piranha even tho he goes first.
-- If IceFire2112, kayakpete und Amazon4God hadn't gotten 2 points, then the game wouldn't have ended so extraordinarily victoriously. (8:13 min.)

Bill pulled a pete and stepped first go onto a fish.
-- If kayakpete, IceFire2112 und Amazon4God hadn't gotten 1 points, then the game wouldn't have ended so pointedly victoriously. (8:55 min.)

Session Report: March 7 2007 - Let's take a cruise to Hawaii

Tongiaki (Bill, Karen, Collin, Beth, Dana, Pete) - Winner Beth
Tongiaki (Bill, Karen, Collin, Beth, Dana, Pete) - Winner Pete

Time for a new game! Pete picked up Tongiaki from Tanga a few weeks ago in TangaTrash. After a play he didn't like it so much. Then he played over the weekend with more people. Not bad!

Might as well try it out on BSW. Brettspielwelt has gotten to be easier on us now that we've played several games on it. The interface is better known by everyone, and we seem to have less crashing. Most sensible members have moved over to the BSW client, as opposed to the website. Those that have not will soon be playing Piranha Pedro on the ice chunks out in Lake Michigan. You, Bill, have been warned.

Game one went swimmingly, as we learned the rules, and just how treacherous the seas can really be. Many ships were lost. In the end it was a 20 to 20 tie between Dana and Beth. Tie-breaker #1, most islands, tied! Tie-breaker #2, least boats, Beth came out on top!

-- The opponents of magennis had to concede, with 20 points the victory was simply greatly. (35:17 min.)

Ok, everyone's got it now. The strategy and tactics in Tongiaki are not obvious from the get-go. I think it takes a game to really start to get into it. And we did in the second game. Back and forth island battles seemed to be the norm, and there were no qualms about setting the opposing tribe on a sure path to Davy Jones.

In the end, Pete had a nice daisy-chain to move himself on to a couple islands, and boot everyone but Karen off Hawaii. Hawaii's no fun if you are the only one there, however. Pet left Karen crying on the beach, and moved on to a couple more islands, and some nice ship sinkings.

-- Heavenly, kayakpete dominated the game with 24 points. (64:05 min.)

This game should NOT take this long. Hopefully the analysis paralysis will subside in future games.

It seemed to be a hit, and the general consensus was to give it another play. Maybe it will survive better than Clans? Time will tell.

If you have not registered properly on BSW by now, you are missing out on game stats that are kept up at BSW. You can see Pete's Score and Bills, for example.

In fact, here we all are:

• Pete
• Bill
• Beth
• Collin
• Dana
• Karen
  

One of these links is not like the others.
One of these links just doesn't belong.
Can you guess which link is not likes the others.
Before I finish my song.

And now my song is done.


See ya next week on the VBGG!

Session Report February 28 2007 - BSW Domestic Disturbance

Transamerica (Dana, Bill, Karen) Winner - Felix
Transamerica (Dana, Bill, Karen) Winner - Phoebee

We started off with some excitement to move to Puerto Rico. In a sad coincidence, BSW PULLED PR from their games list on the very same day. The buzz is that the online rights to the game have been moved to another company. Perhaps Msoft for Xbox? Who knows. All we know is that we were left out.

We tried another version we found online, but had difficulty getting everyone hooked up. Installing new software during a vbgg session is always a bad idea. It's frustrating and time consuming. And usually doesn't work.

Pete was pulled out on a feline domestic disturbance. Dana, Bill and Karen moved back to Transamerica. No report on who won, so Pete's cats win by default.

Session Report: February 21 2007 - Ra's suns melt snow

Ra (Beth, Collin, Bill, Karen, Pete) - Winner Bill
Ra (Beth, Collin, Bill, Karen, Pete) - Winner Collin

abaate
zhakaagonagaa

It's a big snow melt here in the Land of the Ottawa Indians. Their hearts must have lifted even more than ours do as the weather becomes more bearable. Who did they blame for the cold? Who did they thank for the warmth? Probably not Ra. But maybe the mighty sun?

We turned to Ra, and it's awesome sun disks for a couple rounds of Nile-drenched pharaoh fun. The game plays fast. Fast enough to melt ice, and keep Pete from playing his ukulele between turns. Too bad for Pete, but everyone else was perhaps happy.

Out of the gate, Pete scolds Colin for calling Ra when holding the largest 16 sun disk. Why call Ra when you can win the bigger auction, he thinks. Well, what does Pete know, anyway. Collin fully trounces his final score. But it's Bill whom the sun (or Ra) shines on the brightest - He wins game 1.

Game One:

-- Lamork scores 3 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- kayakpete scores -5 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- Lamork scores 11 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 2 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 2 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- kayakpete scores 1 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 13 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 25 (Total: 49) points.
-- Amazon4God scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 9 (Total: 21) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 16 (Total: 30) points.
-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 9 (Total: 15) points.
-- IceFire2112 scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 7 (Total: 32) points.
-- Without Lamork's 49 points, the game may never have ended so without equal. (45:14 min.)

Game 2:

Ok. Everyone's warmed up now. Let's play again! Bill seems to have a solid strategy down, and bids quickly, while everyone else ponders there moves once again in game 2. Decisions are sometimes not easy in Ra. Sometimes ya gotta think.

And smack talk. Pete tries to twist the game his way with a couple "You should by that"'s, and "You'd be wasting your money"'s. He shows better in game 2. A 4-way tie for lowest pharaoh? Ouch.

Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by IceFire2112; with 5 players).
-- Amazon4God scores 14 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 14 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 4 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- kayakpete scores 10 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- Amazon4God scores 3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores -7 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 0 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- kayakpete scores 1 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- Amazon4God scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 10 (Total: 37) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 29 (Total: 34) points.
-- IceFire2112 scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 11 (Total: 38) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 15 (Total: 29) points.
-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 16 (Total: 37) points.
-- The opponents of IceFire2112 had to concede, with 38 points the victory was simply impressively. (41:49 min.)

We are all now getting to understand the game. Simplistic strategies of last week won't work anymore. Everyone, including Ra, sees what you are doing. And you aren't going to get away with it! Look at those second-game points. The spread is 9 points between 5 players, and 4 points between 4. Now that's classic Kinizia-close gaming.

Just wait until the VBGG discovers Puerto Rico. Ooooh man, is that gonna shine!

Session Report February 14 2007 - Valentines Day Invasion

Invade Earth (Mars) Karen, Bill, Dana, Pete - Winner Karen

We've finished our first game of Invade Earth! Play time is a factor with the VBGG's 2 hour schedule. But, with practice, this game could probably be pulled off in that time. We ran a bit over, as we had a false-start trying to load an old game, and a kid succumbing to a bit of the stomach flu in turn 2. Yucky!

In classic risk 2210 style, assemble mods seemed to be the zinger of the day. Dana pulled of a continent in the start, with Pete and Karen very close. Dana quickly found his hold tenuous , and retreated to the moons. Karen, confidently took over a large swath of the board.

Pete had a nice nest, but was a little to aggressive. Choosing not to "spread and defend", he broke a treaty pushed a force against Karen to reduce her lead. Break a treaty with Karen? Bad idea. Pete suffered heavily under Karen's returning wrath.

Karen finished her turn 5 first with a commanding lead. Bill Took it away with some nukes that destroyed some convenient bonus.

Dana, however, pulled out the acient rule: "On Valentines day, Girls Win." A couple well placed nukes toppled bill from the lead, and gave Karen the win.

Good game!

Happy Birthday VBGG - Reflections

Happy 1st Birthday VBGG!

It's been just over one year since we started the Virtual Board Game Group. I would like to thank my gaming friends for the fun week in and week out at our regular sessions. It's been great!



In my reflection, I found myself telling our story. The Podcast, the DiceTower has been having a bit of a discussion about online board gaming. I had to give my two cents. Here's what I said:

Howdy -

I'm a long time listener to the Dice Tower. New to the forums, however!

I thought I would chime in on the current ongoing discussion of Online Gaming, and how it does (or doesn't) support the hobby of Board Gaming.

Online boardgames emulate table-top games very well, except in one regard. As Tom has attested to, the socialization component does not make the transition from the table top to the PC well.

Online gaming does have an advantage, however. It is convenient. There are always games starting and opponents to play against. As a working parent, finding time during the week to game with friends is neigh impossible!

So it's a double-whammy. Socialization mechanisms are lacking in online board gaming and people want quick, convenient, games. Well, that's not a good way to emulate table-top gaming!

My board game group wanted to try to match the table top gaming experience a little closer. We wanted to play with friends. We wanted to chat between turns. We wanted to smack-talk. Yet we wanted the convenience of being able to play during the week, when there was no time to get together face to face.

Enter the VBGG. A year ago I formed an arm of our small gaming group, and called it the Virtual Board Game Group (VBGG). We have played almost every week since it's inception. I believe our success lies in the efforts to promote socialization. Here's what we did:

* Meet once a week, after all kids are put to bed, and chores are done.
* Strictly end gaming at a certain time, as people have work the next morning
* Use Skype to allow voice communications between players
* Blog all activity as an archive, and information tool

This formula has allowed us to not only get a lot more gaming in, but also maintain friendships. We add socialization to Online Gaming, and convenience to our gaming hobby.

Feel free to check out the VBGG Blog at:

http://vbgg.blogspot.com

I'll post a copy of this note over there, as my group will find it interesting as well. Feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers!

- Kayakpete

Thanks to you all for the good fun AND friendship over the past year. I look forward to the next, as we continue to have fun at the VBGG.

Session Report February 8 2007 - The Delight of Pushing Your Luck

Transamerica (Bill, Pete, Karen, Dana) - Winner Bill
Transamerica (Collin, Bill, Pete, Karen, Dana) - Winner Collin
Ra (Collin, Bill, Pete, Karen, Dana) - Winner UNKNOWN
Ra (Collin, Bill, Pete, Karen, Dana) - Winner Collin


Transamerica for the starting game tonight. Bill walloped us in the first game with some lucky city draws. Or was it luck that his opponents were laying track for him? Perhaps so. All I know is that I (Pete) Got stuck with Boston waaaay in the north east. Ouch!

#1 -- The victory of Lamork was planned brilliant and ended with 13 points. (16:27 min.)

Game Two and I'm stuck in Boston again. Hey, I thought this was a RANDOM draw! This time it's worse... I've got the north-midwest city, and am all alone crossing the great lakes. Meanwile everyone else works together to get out quick.. It's a quick game, as I loose 9 points in a round to end the game quickly. Collin takes it.

#2 -- Wow, IceFire2112 just put it away with 9 points. Gigantically. (16:58 min.)

Back to Ra! Collin suffers through the first learning game, as we teach him some of the subtleties of tactics in the game of Ra. He starts picking it up quickly. I seem to have forgotten to log the winner on this one. I guess we can chalk it up as a learning session anyway.

We play again!

Dana plays a Call-Ra-Lots strategy that seems to actually do rather well for him. Collin struggles with, what I suppose could be termed, noobie bidding woes. When you first start to play Ra, it seems difficult to figure out exactly how much an auction might be worth. When would you bid 5, but not go as high as 7? Tough call to be sure. But that's part of the fun.

Everyone has a good laugh as Dana pushes his luck. The ra track is at 8 and Dana's alone with a free sun disk.. One more Ra tile, and the round's over. He goes from one tile at auction to a full eight, and then proceeds to buy the lot for the #1 sun disk. Sweet!

Not sweet enough. Karen's piles of monuments pushes her into the lead in the end. Well played!

-- kayakpete scores -2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 8 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 4 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores 3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Amazon4God scores 8 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 8 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- IceFire2112 scores 7 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 4 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 10 (Total: 21) points.
-- Amazon4God scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 18 (Total: 44) points.
-- fineltour scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 16 (Total: 38) points.
-- IceFire2112 scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 15 (Total: 32) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 13 (Total: 27) points.
-- Significantly, Amazon4God obliterated the opposition with 44 points. (61:12 min.)

Good Good fun!

See you next week!

VBGG Brettspielwelt How-To

Everyone knows that Brettspielwelt can be a bit overwhelming. The user interface isn't exactly friendly! Here's a quick guilde on how to make your BSW experience just a little better

The Setup:

Register -

It's worth it to register for the BSW. Then your statistics are tracked. If you have two gamers in the same house at the same time, then you MUST be registered.

Click here to Register at Brettspielwelt

Download the Client -

Yes, yes, you can simply go to BSW and play, but you are risking java wackyness! You are much better off downloading the BSW client that has a java virtual machine built in. Here's how to do it.

• Click here to download the client.
  
• Install it
• Download Pete's Prop File
• Move it to C:\Program Files\BrettspielWelt and replace the old (german) brettspielwelt.prop file
• Start your new BSW client (in your start menu)

Note! You should do this BEFORE VBGG game night. The client will connect and update itself. This can take some time!

Once you are in, you need to make a minor toolbar change:

* right-click on the blank part of the toolbar, next to the ? help menu option
* Select configure
* In the right blue box, select Menu
* Click the blue left arrow to move the menu option to your toolbar.
* Click OK
* type /save on the chat line at the bottom of the window

See the Config Tool Help Page for details

If you don't see the bottom chat window, resize your window to be a to be more narrow and more tall. you will see it.

You are now ready to Play!

BSW Navigation Tricks:

Click Menu, select VBGG, and select the option you want, or use the following

Commands:

/ghook (user) - move to the game table that user is in
/join - join a game
/start - start a game
/reset - reset a game before start
/remove (user) - Remove user from game
/masterreset - reset a started game

Here's a full command list

What was that horrible sounds? What are these chat boxes?

Yeah, turn them off. Click on Channels menu option and uncheck SPV_EN and SPV (QP-F). They are good for meeting other people to play with, but not for the VBGG.


Where can I see my BSW statistics

Check out the site

Session Report January 31 - Ra? Rah!

Ra (Beth, Bill, Dana Pete) - Winner Beth
Ra (Beth, Bill, Dana Pete) - Winner Pete

Pete had the good fortune to play Ra with Marc and Ernie (his dog) last weekend. Ra ranks very highly at Boardgame Geek. Number 11, in fact! There is a balance in the game that is so very typical of a Reiner Knizia design. Ra takes about 30 minutes to play. Perhaps less, once you are proficient playing.

In game one Pete floundered through getting every up to speed on the game, along with figuring out the BSW interface. As per the norm, it's not obvious how to play. "Where do I click?" is the phrase of the evening. One troublesome part of BSW's implementation is that the tile scoring is not directly at hand. We utilized a Ra pdf scoring sheet found at BGG. The Rules for Ra ar'nt bad either.

But we got it going! in the end, Beth pulled off the win in what might have been a close game? Who knows. Some of Knizia's games are always close.

-- kayakpete scores 0 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 3 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 8 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 5 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores 5 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores -2 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 0 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 9 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 18 (Total: 33) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 23 (Total: 34) points.
-- fineltour scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 26 (Total: 44) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 22 (Total: 46) points.

-- 46 points let magennis grab the whole thing fantastically! (56:35 min.)

Next round up! In game 2 we were starting to see some of the subtle strategies of Ra come out. Bill managed, for example, to win the 3 highest sun tiles at auction leaving himself for what might be thought of as an excellent position for the next epoch. Pete, however, seemed to call Ra on him with little 3 and 4 tile auction blocks, making it seem a shame to spend his 11, 12 or 13. Tricky!

In the end Pete did well:

-- kayakpete scores 15 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 3 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores 4 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 2 points in the ancient age (2665 - 2155 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores 4 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- fineltour scores 1 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- Lamork scores -1 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).
-- magennis scores 3 points in the middle age (2130 - 1650 B.C.).

-- kayakpete scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 26 (Total: 55) points.
-- fineltour scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 10 (Total: 24) points.
-- Lamork scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 18 (Total: 31) points.
-- magennis scores in the modern age (1555 - 1080 B.C.) 20 (Total: 35) points.

-- In an exemplary manner, kayakpete won the game with 55 points. (33:35 min.)

Everyone enjoyed this game, but thought that there might be some advantages to playing face-to-face over the table. Especially for beginners. And, perhaps, with any player interaction game, there's always something lost in the translation to the virtual world. Auction and bluffing games, however, may suffer more so than other games.

Add one more game to the VBGG shelf. Ra! Good fun!

See you next week!

Session Report: January 24 - Go with what works

Transamerica (Karen, Collin, Bill) - Winner Karen
Transamerica (Karen, Collin, Bill) - Winner Collin
Transamerica (Karen, Collin, Bill) - Winner Collin
Transamerica (Karen, Collin, Bill) - Winner Collin

From the desk of our correspondent, Collin:

Pete and Dana joined us for some Wednesday night fun, but both had to
bug out early before any games were played. However, Karen was able
to join us. After unsuccessfully trying to get Collin's laptop to
host Cities3D, Bill, Karen, and Collin went to BSW and played
TransAmerica.

Collin needed to first game to shake the rust off from
not playing last week, but from then on he proved to be a master
track layer, sweeping the next three games in a commanding
fashion. Was it luck? Was it skill? We'll chalk it up to a little
of both. Karen took the first game, but that was all the glory she
was able to grab. Bill had a bit of trouble finding some traction,
but was able to turn things around and make a good showing in the final game.

Scores:
Game 1: Karen 8, Collin 3, Bill 0
Game 2: Collin 9, Karen 2, Bill 0
Game 3: Collin 9, Karen 4, Bill 0
Game 4: Collin 10, Bill 7, Karen 0

[Perhaps Bill let 'em win. Boosting their confidence only to trounce them next week? -Ed.]

See you next Wednesday for what will hopefully be a full-bore game of Settlers or 2010!

Session Report: January 17 2007 - Who's on first?

The Players: Dana, Bill, Karen and Beth Versus Pete

The Game: Guess Which Games We Played.

Skype Transcript, for your reading pleasure:

Pete: "So, what'd you guys play last Wednesday?"

Player 1: "Oh, you wanted to know that didn't you. Hmm... not sure."

Player 2: "Well, we did try to play Risk, but we didn't have a network engineer around."

Player 1: "Yeah, and I couldn't RTFM. Nor could I even find the router manual if I wanted to."

Pete: "Ah yes. Hosted games can be tricky. But for Risk, you just need to disengage the fimcombublator and set your forswanger to flibbith. Try that next time."

Player 1: "Riiight. That's helpful, Pete. Thanks a lot for that. Perhaps you would share your code on Days of Wonder, so we can play without you."

Pete: "Now why would I do that. Next thing I know you'll be wanting to borrow 20 bucks."

Player 2: "Well, yeah, but I'd buy a game with it!"

Pete rolls his eyes.



But seriously.....

Bill, Karen, Beth and Dana fired up Brettspielwelt for a game of piranha pedro and a few more games of Transamerica. Fun was had by all, as far as I can tell. Everybody won, except Pete who was suffering from a long day and a cold. He turned in early.

Oh! Lisa, Dana's better half, did join for a game of Transamerica as well. Welcome to the VBGG Lisa!

"See" you next week!

Session Report: January 10 2006 - Divide and Conquer

Table 1:
Settlers of Catan (5-player map) (Beth, Bill, Pete) - Winner Beth

Table 2:
TransAmerica (Karen, Collin, Dana) - TIE Karen + Collin
TransAmerica (Karen, Collin, Dana) - Winner Dana
TransAmerica (Karen, Collin, Dana) - Winner Karen
TransAmerica (Karen, Collin, Dana) - Winner Dana
TransAmerica (Karen, Collin, Dana) - Winner Karen


Well, it was a shaky start! Started Transamerica. Crashed, and more players showed up. We're up to 6! Hey, let's try out Fist of Dragonstones - It's 6 player! No! The online version is only 4! I know, let's play Catan with the new Cities 3D game client! Gaa! Not all of us have it installed! And it requires a windows upgrade (.net)!

So the group, for the first time in VBGG history breaks in Two! Beth, Pete and Bill managed to get into a Cities3D session, and split from Karen, Collin and Dana, who went off to play TransAmerica. Two separate skype sessions for the two tables, and a single chat session to keep the VBGG together. It seemed to work well!

Table 1 -

The new Cities3D interface is very pretty. Functionality is pretty much the same as S3D that most of have played in the past. We found there to be some nice improvements to the interface, particularly in trading. The new version, however, is under heavy development. We see some of the functions (like tournament start option) missing, and experienced a couple bugs. We did get one game off without a problem.

Note! The VBGG is currently using Cities3D 0.9.1. You need to be at this version! Please uninstall, first, any old versions before you install this one! If you don't you will get some nasty bugs! "It says I rolled a 9!" "No you didn't! You rolled a 7!" Yaaah!

• Cities3D HomePage
• Cities3D v0.9.1 Installer

Be sure you get this installed so you will be ready when the VBGG decides to play Catan!

Table 2:

Who knew they could lay train track across the mighty Mississippi so fast! Karen, Dana and Collin hammered out 5 games of Transamerica. There is definitely something to be said for a game you can knock out in 20 minutes. Really lots of fun! Bart got the boardgame for Christmas as well. We've found that it plays very nicely on the tabletop.

Game 1: Karen 10, Collin 10, Dana 0
Game 2: Dana 8, Collin 7, Karen 0
Game 3: Karen 9, Dana 8, Collin 0
Game 4: Dana 11, Collin 8, Karen 0
Game 5: Karen 5, Dana 4, Collin 0

Karen comes out on top. Was it Luck? Was it Skill? Was it ruthless tactics? Hey, and what the heck happened to Dana in game 1? Maybe the Table 2 players will elaborate on their train-building feats.

Thanks, everyone, for you continued regular participation in the VBGG. See you next week!

Session Report January 3 - Beth's been workin' on da Raaail Roooad

Transamerica (Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Beth
Transamerica (Beth, Collin, Pete) - Winner Beth


Woo Woo! Pete taught Beth and Collin Transamerica on Brettspielwelt.

Beth seems to have picked it up quite nicely. The first game took some time as Pete's internet connection crashed. It was a right pain to get things back up, but we eventually did.

-- Incredibly, magennis won the game with 2 points. (53:07 min.)

Ok, now Collin's got it figured out, and we are off to game 2. Lookin' not so good, and Beth quickly plays to a win again!

-- Now magennis has won excellently with 7 points! (17:41 min.)

Well, it's not whether you win or loose, it's how you play the game. Wait a sec. Collin and Pete didn't play the game all that great either! Drat! Well, let me re-phrase that old cliche - It's not whether you win or loose, it's if you had fun.

Well, that we did. Tonight was Beth's night. Enjoy it while it lasts, cuz da boyz gonna be gunnin' fer ya after this woopin'! ;-)

Cheers!

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!

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!

Session Report Oct 25 - Let there be trains

Session report Oct 25
Ticket To Ride (3)
- Beth, Karen, Dana, Bill, Bart, Pete
- Winners Dana, Karen, Pete

We had 3 smooth games of Ticket To Ride by Days of Wonder. This is a easy game to pick up, yet has enough strategy to be engaging. We play this while camping with the kids, and used to play online lots!

Welcome back Bart! Long time, no see in the VBGG. Hope you get in the habit of joining us once again!

Well back to Online for us. Dana, having not played much anyway, clicked his way to victory handily in the first game.

Karen the noob seemed to pick the game up just fine and won the second game nicely!

And Pete, in the third game, rushed his trains to take everyone off guard. With only two tickets, he beat Dana out by 4 for the win.

The VBGG pretty much started with games of Ticket To Ride. And with good reason. Quick easy play. Solid system. Fast and fun!

Thanks to everyone that showed up this evening, and look forward to next week! Remember to drop a comment with any opinions on tonight's games, or what you might want to play next week!

Session Report Oct 18 - Hey, that's my Hut!

Session report Oct 18
Lost Cities (1), Hey, that's my fish! (3), Clans (1)
- Collin, Beth, Pete and Dana
- Winners Collin, Collin, Dana, Pete, Dana
- Looser: Bill, who had to work late.

Ok, so who invited this Dana character anyway? He trapses in here with this "I don't know how to get this going" stuff, and "I don't got skype" hooey. I think we've been hoodwinked!

Welcome Dana!

We finally got Dana (Skype: fineltour) online to play some games with the VBGG. And boy did he. Pete played a quick game of Lost cities as the Collin and Beth came online. Lost cities is a really nice filler game. Easy enough to play. Nice theme. I bet it's more fun with real cards. Well, Dana picked it up quick enough. He clobbered Pete. Pete admits a couple dumb moves, but didn't intentionally throw the game.

4 online, time for a nice warm-up game. It's been a while since we've gamed, so off to Pcakeis am Pol, or Hey that's my Fish! Yeah, well, Hey, that's Fish! After figuring out that you have to place your starter penguins on flows with only 1 fish (silly me), we were off to some good jumpin. Dana once again figured it out pretty quick and won another one. What the heck! Who invited this guy, anyway! In the end Dana won two and Pete won one.

[EDIT 10/19: Oops! Had Dana down for winning 3. He actually one 1, with Collin winning 2. Sorry Collin! -ed]

There is some sort of strategy with this game. And it's not just heading to the biggest piles of fish. That's your tactics tip for the week. Ha ha!

Beth bowed out and da' boyz moved on to a game of Clans. Pete thought he might have another chance to win with these two noobs. Pete had a good strategy: "Oh, yeah, I forgot about that rule". and "Gee, I didn't know it worked like that...". He thought he had a good thing going, but the first village formed without Pete in it. Everyone's at, like, 20 points, and Pete's got zero. Oops! I will admit. Data has a bit of knack for the tactics on an abstract game such as this. Heck, He excels at ANYTHING that doesn't throw DICE.

Ah, but seriously. It's great to have Dana join us at the VBGG. Hope to see him back for our regular weekly sessions. He's just got to get a headset. That barbie talk-o-matic microphone he had wasn't cuttin it. More like cuttin' out, it was. :-D

Perhaps next week we can take a stab at an oldie but goodie with the vbgg: Ticket To Ride. Pete got a renewal on his membership and can once again host games. So be sure to stop by Days of Wonder and make sure your login is working, you remember the password, or you register! Ticket to Ride is just that much better when you don't have to score your trains. ;-)

In the Shadow of the Emperor Online

In the Shadow of the Emperor Online is a new open beta of a boardgame by Hans im Glück that might be worth checking out.

Anyone have any comments on this?

Session Report Sept 27 - Lost Meeples

Session report Sept 27
Lost Cities, Carcassonne
- Karen, Bill and Pete
- Winners Bill and Pete (Tie)

Bill and Pete tried out Lost Cities on BSW. Fun two player card game that has pretty good ratings. It's actually lots of fun. We didn't keep score. ;-) I highly recommend Lost Cities as a two-player filler game.

Karen Bill and Pete played Carcassonne Princess and Dragon. Collin joined in as a spectator. Nice feature of BSW. We had lots of fun eating Cherry, Lemon and Lime meeples. Now that we understand the rules, it was good fun! Pete had a nice 15 point lead with 28 tiles left. In the end game, pete's ahead by 20 points but bill's hot the fields locked up tight.

-- kayakpete scored 79 points during the game, and in the final scoring 1 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 16 points for cloisters, 0 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- Lamork scored 53 points during the game, and in the final scoring 3 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 7 points for cloisters, 33 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- Amazon4God scored 46 points during the game, and in the final scoring 14 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 0 points for cloisters, 6 points with farmers, as well as 0 points for goods.
-- Excellently, Lamork und kayakpete obliterated the opposition with 96 points. (75:00 min.)

Woah! TIE! Bill 96, Pete 96, Karen 66.

Bill has the Princess and Dragon expansion on his definate buy list now. I agree! Lots of fun munching meeples!

Session report Sept 20
Catan standard 3 player
- Karen, Bill and Pete
- Winner Karen and Bill.


Karen wins game 1 nicely. Bill and Pete got mad and demanded a second game to get revenge.

Bill waltzed away with the second game with an island to his own, and some nice fours. Rock+Wheat build cities strategy.

Session Report: September 13 2006 - Clans

Clans (BSW) (2 games)
- Bill, Karen, Beth, Pete
- Winner Pete, Beth



We played a couple games of Clans. It's fun because it plays quickly.

-- kayakpete won the game impressively. The victory was with 37 points. (21:27 min.)
-- But will [Beth]magennis win the next game so brilliant with 55 points? (14:23 min.)

Catan (Map: A New World (V))
- Collin, Karen, Beth, Pete
- Winner Karen

The map is pretty interesting that is very islandy, and players must place the ports at game beginning. Game progresses pretty evenly with Collin, Karen and Pete tied up to almost the end. 27% of the rolls were bandit! Crazy bandit 5 times in a row and stuff. Fun fun! In the end Karen pulled off largest army for the win.

Session Report: September 6 - Penguins and Clans

Session report September 6

Hey, that's my fish! (BSW) (5 games)
- Bill, Karen, Beth, Pete
- Winners Bill, Pete, Pete, Beth, Beth

We fired up BrettSpielWelt with new BSW comers Beth and Karen. After the normal struggles learning the interface, we got Hey, That's my Fish! Also known as Packeis am Pol. This is a very quick little filler game where you move penguins around a rapidly disintegrating board, catching fish. Watch where you move, so you don't find yourself stranded on a little iceberg with no more fish to catch!

Pete demoed this game at GenCon and thought it would be a nice easy game for starters on BSW. It went over well! Poor Karen, she lost two games to Pete and one to Beth by only 1 fish! Beth caught on quick to win the last two games. She pulled a nice jump on Pete, leaving him stranded early in the final game.

Game 1: Hey! That's my fish! - winner Bill (over Pete)
Game 2: Hey! That's my fish! - winner Pete (over Karen, Beth) Pete by one point over Karen!
Game 3: Hey! That's my fish! - winner Pete (over Beth, bill, Karen) Pete by one point over Karen
Game 4: Hey! That's my fish! - winner Beth win (over Pete, bill, Karen)
Game 5: Hey! That's my fish! - winner Beth win (over Pete, bill, Karen) by 1 over Karen!

Clans (BSW) (1 game)
- Bill, Karen, Pete
- Winner Pete


Ok, we're on a roll. Let's try another new game, now that we have access to the hordes of BSW games. Clans is a nice eurogame that was a Spiel Des Jahres nominee in 2003. It rates a very respectable 6.8 at Boardgamegeek. Check out their Clan Page . True to German game form, this has very simple rules, but great depth of strategy and tactics. It plays quite quickly as well. We finished our first "figuring it out" game in less than 1/2 hour. The fun twist about this game is that you actually are not sure what color your opponents are playing! Also true to eurogame style, the score was close. Pete, perhaps a bit more familiar with the rules, eked out the win. Muahahah.

-- Overwhelmingly, kayakpete dominated the game with 51 points. (25:58 min.)

If you haven't registered for Brettspielwelt, you should do so. Click the link to the right, click on the British flag to get it into English, and register!

Great night of gaming. See you next week!

Session Report: September 5 - Backgammon and Carcasonne on BSW

Session report September 5

Backgammon (BSW)
- Pete and Bill
- Winner Pete.

Bill Challenged Pete to a Backgammon re-match, and warm-up using the BSW interface. BSW can be a little ticky to get used to, that's for sure. Once you learn it, I don't think it's too bad, however. Pete won by about 6 bolts, due to a couple good doubles.

Carcasonne (BSW)
- Pete (kayakpete) and Bill (Lamork)
- Winner Pete.

Gamemaster: lamork sits at position number 2.
Gamemaster: The game begins! (Started by kayakpete; with 2 players).
-- Using Inns and Cathedrals Expansion.
-- Using Traders and Builders Expansion.
-- Using The Princess and the Dragon Expansion.

Pete and Bill tried out Carcasonne on Brettspielwelt. The interface takes a little getting used to, and lacks some nice features we are used to in asobrain. But it does work, and has the Princess and Dragon expansion. It took us a bit to figure it out, but woah - Cool! When a dragon tile shows up this dragon romps around the board and eats your meeples! Gaah! It was a mighty battle. Just when you thought you had a city or field, here comes the dragon to threaten it.

We were a little slow since we had to learn the new interface and rules. But it was worth it:

-- kayakpete scored 160 points during the game, and in the final scoring 0 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 7 points for cloisters, 38 points with farmers, as well as 10 points for goods.
-- lamork scored 162 points during the game, and in the final scoring 0 points for roads, 0 points for cities, 8 points for cloisters, 24 points with farmers, as well as 20 points for goods.
-- The game went pointedly, and produced kayakpete as the winner with 215 points. (80:06 min.)

Final score - Bill: 214, Pete: 215! Pete wins by one point by virtue of a big field that slipped Bills watchful eye.

Session Report: August 30 2006 - Catan

Session report August 30
Catan standard 3 player
- Karen, Beth and pete
- Winner Pete.

Quick 3 player game where Pete did initial placemets last, but ened up with Year of plenty AND road building for a quick looooogest road. Nice even game with everyone at 8 points around the final turn. Pete pulls ahead on resurces with plenty of spots to build settlements. He does so for the win.

Session Report: August 23 2006 - Catan

August.23.2006 -
Settlers of Catan
- Bill+Karen+Beth+Beth
- Winners Bill+Collin

Bill Karen Beth and Charlie played a killer game of Catan. Collin, in his infinite wisdom, decided that it would be a good idea to help Beth out with lots of "sound advice". Unfortunately it was in vain, as Karen romped all over the board, and had kick butt dice rolls. The bandit was on her side, and karma was at 100%! Wait.. that's not right. Karen had all her stuff on 4. And she was gettin' nothing until the end, when her ship came in - the 4 rolled to give her the resources and the game.

Spiel By Web play by email games.

Good evening!

I came across SpielByWeb , a Play By Email type boardgame site. They have several good games that you play via email, or PEBM. They are graphically based, but games would take days instead of minutes.

Is anyone interested in playing a game of Tikal with me? We would play via web with email notifications when it's your turn. Tikal is fairly easy. I'm interested to try the game out, and spielbyweb.

Post a comment if interested.

Session Report: August 16 2006 - Carcasonne

August.16.2006 -
Carcassonne
- Bill+Pete+Collin+Beth
- Winners Bill+Collin

Back to trusty Carcassonne! Bill and Pete logged into AsoBrain to find some updates. Cleaner graphics, and working well! In Game 1 Bill and Pete had a brutal battle for a massive field and a city or two. It was pretty heated! Great game! In the end Bill slipped in an extra farmer to take a massive field. That, and controlling all 3 recources gave him a solid win.

In game 2 Collin and Beth joined Bill and Pete for a second game of castle building. City battles seemed to rule the day, as farmers seemed to take a back seat. Bill's computer rebooted itself, and he morphed it Robot-Bill, a horrible player! Dang Bots!

In the end, Pete managed to take a large field then combine some other smaller fields to get a nice field bonus. Collin ruled resources, taking wine and cloth, and tying pete for bread.

It was neck and neck in the final scoring, with Collin and Pete's scores crawling up. But *BAM* in the end the bonus resource score gave Collin a commanding win! Wow. Another good game!

Session Report: August 15 2006 - San Juan

August.15.2006 -
Brettspielwelt Play Test - Backgammon and San Juan
- Bill+Pete
- Winners Xorik (Non VBGG member)

Bill and Pete decided to give Bretspielwelt a go. We got things working NO Problem. Not that we knew how to play any of the games, however!

We started easy with a quick game of backgammon. Bill was a bit rusty, and could remember which way to go. A few clicks got us on track. Pete wins!

Ok, on to a more interesting game: San Juan. San Juan is a nice card game with quite nice depth. Pete had played a different computer version before, and knew a tiny bit. As we sat there wondering what to do, Xorik joined us, and offered to teach. He did, and beat us. We didn't do half bad, however.

-- kayakpete erreichte 24 SP, davon 16 SP durch Gebaeude und 8 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Xorik erreichte 30 SP, davon 24 SP durch Gebaeude und 6 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- lamork erreichte 25 SP, davon 17 SP durch Gebaeude und 7 SP durch grosse Gebaeude. Kapelle: 1
-- The opponents of Xorik had to concede, with 30 points the victory was simply greatly. (48:30 min.)

It's a fun game! I suggest we play more.

San Juan at Boardgamegeek

San Juan at Brettspielwelt

See you!

Session Report: August 2 2006 - Catan

August.2.2006 -
Settlers of Catan
- Bill+Karen+Beth+Charlie
- Winners Bill

Bill is on a rampage! Where's Bart to provide compitition? He can't be stopped!

Bart and Pete got called into cousin moving service. As the scenario set up, Sarah rolled a double-zero on the percentile. Her professional mover friend showed, Jeff, up! He, coupled with the big horse trailer, for the win!

Sesssion Report: August 1 - Catan

August 1st 2006
Settlers of Catan (4 islands)
- Bill+Karen+Pete
- Winners Bill


The "Tuesday Night Pickup Game" continues to see players show up. Pete had last/first placement giving him a nice starting position on an 8 and a 6 in a bit of a crowded island. But the 8's were all but gone. Oddly we saw 5 12's in 6 or 7 rolls further skewing the dice statistics. The bandit was on a rampage too.

Bill grabed largest army and stole longest road from Karen for a 12 point win.

Session Report: July 26 - Catan

July.26.2006 -
Settlers of Catan (Oceans 4)
- Bill+Karen+Beth+Collin?
- Winner Bill


Pete was busy trying to win a game of Paint the Living Room, which he eventually lost. But the VBGG carried on with a rosing game fo Something that someone won.

Still waiting on a session report for this one.