Sunday 23 March 2008

Pre Cuban game night

Well it was our last game night before we head to Cuba and we had a relatively small turnout with 7 people playing a total of three games.

The first game for the night was Mall of Horror, a game of negotiation and throwing people under the drooling teeth of the undead. Amanda "I won't eat your eyes" winning out over everyone else by keeping two of her people alive and whacking everyone else.

Game two was Ca$h n Gun$, a game that I won with 80,000 dollars compared to everyone else's 70K, well and the cooling corpses of Tim and Shawn...

Shawn, Amanda and Tim all left which meant we then broke out Railroad Tycoon, which Leah (aka Cornelius Vanderbilt) won in dominating fashion, hammering out an eight point win over 2nd place. Brenda finished in third, one point out of second place. The game was close until Leah completed both her Tycoon task and then got the card that allowed her to take five points for completing Washington and New York City. The game went in an odd direction, since there were only four players. Leah built in the NE starting out of New York City. Brenda built in the SE in the Raleigh area, Rob built in the NE as well, forcing competition between him and Leah. This allowed me to build in the Midwest (conveniently enough I had the Tycoon card that allowed me to get two points per Chicago link). Leah and Rob were both several small routes, with Leah's being the smallest and Rob having the most links, but less track. Brenda was from New Orleans to Richmond, Rob was in the NE and then added some tracks in the Ohio area. Rob and Leah were both first timers to the game and really enjoyed it. They are now prepared to play when they head back to Morse.

I don't know when the bext game night will be as I am away the weekend of the 19th of April and the Calgary Entertainment Expo is on the following weekend. This leaves me with only the 12th of April for a games night. I put a poll on the right side to see yeah or nay for that date.

Monday 17 March 2008

Gaming over the weekend

Jay and Cory came over Saturday night and we played the introductory scenario to Doom. I played the invaders and they played a marine each. The game took us about 3 ½ hours. We made a couple of mistakes but nothing major, well until I saw in the FAQ that range does not matter for melee weapons. The invaders won, but it was a close game. I got my 6th frag in the final room as they were about to win.

What I liked about this game:
The pieces are cool, and the game has a good feel to it. There is a certain tenseness with the players as they know they are trapped but fight hard to survive.
The card concept for frags for the invader is stolen directly from Descent, whose ties to Doom can be seen in the combat system and in the development of the characters vs the game.
Combat works as such, every weapon and creature has a set of attack dice and advantages.
The dice work by having a range number, the number of wounds and whether or not it uses ammo on it. If you want to hit something beside you a range of one or better must be on it. Two dice also have misses on them.
Here are a couple of examples; the chainsaw has a range of 1 and uses one red die. The saw also has the advantage of attacking every square around you (if you want) and deadly (which adds a hit). When Jay was attacking a zombie with the saw, he rolled one red dice, looking to geta couple of hits and since ammo does not count on chain saws, he was not concerned. If he rolled 3 hits and an ammo, he would do 4 damage. Now the way armour works is, if a zombie has 3 armour and 2 wounds, for every three hits you do in a round, you cause a wound. So, if Jay did 2 or less hits to the zombie he would do no damage, if he did 3,4 or 5 hits he would do 1, with six he does 2.

Cory was using the shotgun and it uses one red dice and one blue dice, it’s advantages are deadly (an extra hit) and blow through (allows him to attack an adjacent target if he drops a blue or green dice). Cory has two zombies charging at him and are currently 3 spaces away. Cory would pick his first target and roll his dice. He rolls 1 range, 2 hits on the red and 3 range and one hit on the blue. His total range (1+3) is greater then the range required (3) and he would add the damage from the two dice together (2+1+1) for a total of 4 (including the deadly bonus). This means he would do a total of one wound to the first zombie. He then decides to blow through onto the second one and rolls only the red dice. He gets a 3 range, 1 wound and a bullet. This means he had insufficient range to hit the zombie and it costs him his last bullet.

I also like how they scaled the game down when you do not have a full complement of players. The way it works is that the players are colour coded, with a blue, a red and a green player. The creatures are also in all three colours and if that colour of player is not in the game, anywhere the game shows a monster of that colour in the scenario, that creature does not appear. As an example, in the game I played with Cory and Jay, they chose red and blue, so any green creatures that appeared on the scenario map do not appear in the game.

What I didn’t like about the game:
The rules are not systematically set up, so there is some searching to determine what the exact rules are (read the error with melee weapons…)

Will I run another long game night?
Most definitely yes!

Sunday afternoon I hosted Power Grid a mania, a game (or two) of Power Grid. We had 6 people total show up, with 3 of them being newbies and 3 being “old hands”. We played two separate games with the rookies playing in one, and the other three in a separate game.
The new players game was the USA map form the base game. Since it was a three player game it went to 17 cities. Alex, Brenda and I explained the rules to Greg, Peter and Ed who only like mildly puzzled by the game. The initial board set up they used was the lower West Coast, Southern US and up the middle of the map excluding the mid west. This formed an L shape that was lying on it’s back. Ed set up first and started in the west coast, just far enough from the ocean to allow him to get the west coast and block off everyone else. Peter set up second and started in Duluth, which meant that Greg went to Dallas to avoid fighting for space with either. While they played we watched for the first 4 or 5 turns to see if they understood the order in which things were done and then we went on to the other game.

The other game played on the Italy map and used the Power Grid expansion cards. The Italy map is very constrained because it is so narrow and we picked the lower half of the boot.
The card auction was a little different in that the expansion deck has a 1 cost plant and a 2 cost plant. They were not purchased initially and disappeared after the first two cities were built. Power plants in the expansion appear to be a little more efficient then the ones in the original game as well. The 50 point plant is a 2 uranium powered plant that powers 8 cities.
The game was a close affair with Alex winning after powering 18 cities, Brenda finished second with 17 cities (and more money then me) and I pulled up in last place. It took us less then two hours, but all three of us are comfortable with the game and understand the rules and game mechanics.
One of the things I also found different was that we always had a surplus of coal in the game and not until the last two turns was the price of coal above 3. Garbage was similar in that respect and it stayed static at 5 until the later stages when it was dropping. We were almost entirely out of uranium by the end of the game, with only 2 pieces left in the market.
The new players’ game took a little longer then ours, after instructions were completed and they started in on the game, they took about two and a half hours. Peter won the game with 17 cities, Greg was second with 16 and Ed pulled up the rear with 15. Their game was different in that they were almost out of coal.

Tuesday 4 March 2008

Battle Lore - Final week

The final week of BattleLore has rolled around and there was an epic clash of wills as Bruce and I faced off in a series of Epic BattleLore adventures!

The first scenario we played was Raid on Al-Jazirah Al-Khadra from the official epic adventures. Bruce won the first half winning an 8-6 squeaker over me. In the second half it was a different story, my dice did a number on Bruce and I won 7-1, winning the combined event 13-9!

Round two was The Caliphate's Enforcer and it looked like it was going to happen again, as my dice smacked Bruce around and I won 7-3. The second half had Bruce looking worried when I took a shot with my eagle eyed crossbowmen and rolled 4 hits on 5 dice! destroying his heavy infantry. Alas, it was not meant to be, as my dice turned cold and Bruce laid a 7-3 whipping on me, tying the game at 10-10.

Final Standings


NameWinsLossesDraws+/-
Bruce651+16
Steve411+14
John323-4
Darren271-26

Saturday game night

Saturday night was game night, and we had 11 players show up and we played 5 games total.

We started the night with 5 player Vegas Showdown on one table and Ingenious on the other. Brenda squeaked out a close win of 2 points in a low scoring game. She finished with 19 points and 5th finished with 14 in a tense low scoring game. Meanwhile, on the Ingenious table, Robert took everyone to school with a crushing display of abstractedness.

The final two players arrived as the games were ending and we switched to Puerto Rico at one table and Bohnanza at the other. I made a mistake late in the game which cost me certain victory (I blame the cold I have) and allowed Brenda to win by 6 points over me 59-53, third and fourth were both within two points of me as well, scoring 52 and 51 points. The less said about fifth place the better...

Bohnanza was another close affair with Rick squeaking out a win over Robert by holding more cards in his hand at the end of the game, as they were tied in coins.

Rick and Laura left and that meant the others played Grand Prix: Detroit - Cleveland, or at least a shortened version thereof. Lenora won it, by winning the only race that was run.

The next game night is March 22nd, the final game night before we head to Cuba!

There is still a week to vote on the game you would like to play on long game night, remember, if you vote and are planning on showing up, send me an email to bgamegeekATgmailDOTcom so I can send you a copy of the rules.