Weekend gaming recap: Advanced Civilization.

We played our annual game of Advanced Civilization ("Civ") over the weekend. For those who don't know what that is, it's a big old board game about developing a civilization (picture lots of little cardboard chits on a map of the "cradle of civilization") that plays up to 9 players and takes about 2 days to play.

We try to get a game in once a year or so, and this year we actually finished the whole game for the first time in what seems like forever. There were only 6 of us this time, which may have speeded things up a bit -- though it still took half of Saturday and a couple hours on Sunday to finish.

For those interested in the final results (I lost; Lane didn't win) here's the Excel spreadsheet we used to track the game. (There are tabs that show the final scores, empire size over time, and other interesting details.) If you think tracking a boardgame by spreadsheet is geeky, you have to realize that it saves a lot of time moving cardboard chits and counting up stuff. This spreadsheet is one I found on the Web many years ago that we've used ever since -- this particular version actually has a number of modifications of my own that I made this past week in anticipation of next year's game.

Thursday gaming recap: Through the (Gobi) desert.

Lane and Matt came over last night to play some games. (Surprise, surprise.)

The first game we played was Oasis. I had just received Oasis in the mail on Tuesday, after ordering it online last week. (There's this site called Tanga that has great deals on geek-related items. Every evening they put a new item up for sale at a ridiculous price, and when it's gone, it's gone. And every now and then, they sell board games. When I saw Oasis for $8 + $6 shipping -- with a retail price of $35 -- I couldn't pass it up. It sounded like something Sarah might like, so I grabbed with the intention of giving it to her for Christmas. I really couldn't wait that long, so after we closed on our house Tuesday, I gave it to her as a "housewarming" present.)

Anyway, the game technically plays 3, but I read that it was best with 4-5, so I wanted to try it while we had 4 players. The game itself is simple enough: it's a tile-laying game where each player builds areas of oases, steppes, plains, and camel caravans on the gameboard. Your score is based on the size of these 4 features, but there's a catch: in order to score a feature, you need to collect "scoring tiles" of the same type. Your final score for each feature, then, is the size of that feature multiplied by the number of scoring tiles of that type that you've collected. (So if I control 6 oasis spaces, and have 3 oasis scoring tiles in my possession, my oasis score is 18 points. Likewise, if I control 12 steppe spaces, but have 0 steppe scoring tiles, I scoring precisely 0 for the steppes!)

The scoring is simple if fairly math-heavy (for a game), but it's the gameplay that's so much fun. The only way to play tiles or camels to the board, or to collect scoring tiles, is through a simple auction system. There's a deck of cards, where each card allows you to place 1-2 tiles, place 2-3 camels, take 1-2 scoring tiles, or draw more cards. Each player starts with a stack of 5 cards and a disc numbered 1-5 that determines turn order. In turn order, starting with player #1, each player offers 1 to 3 of his cards out to the other players, flipping them off the top of his stack one-by-one. Because you can never look at your stack of cards, there's a nice push-your-luck element here: will next card be worth anything? You won't know until you flip it over. Once all players have revealed their offers, player #1 picks the one he wants, handing over his turn order disc in return, and playing/taking the items shown on the cards. Then player #2 picks the cards that he wants and plays them, and so on down the line, until the last player gets stuck with whatever's left. Then, whoever just received the #1 disc gets to place a bonus tile or camel. Essentially, what you're doing during the auction phase is bidding for turn order, and getting the #1 disc is particularly desirable, not only for having the first pick of offers, but also because of the bonus tile/camel placement that comes with it. You have to be careful not to overbid, though, because (1) you don't want to help your opponents too much, and (2) there's a nifty mechanism that limits your bidding power. Remember that you start with a stack of 5 cards, and can offer up to 3 of them. Whenever you offer only 1 card, you add 2 more cards to your stack. If you offer 2 cards, you add only 1 card to your stack. And if you offer 3 cards, you don't get any replacements. So if you bid 3 cards in the first round, you'll only have 2 cards left with which to bid the next round, and if you bid both of those next time, you'll only get 1 card to bid with in the third round. So there's some wonderful tension in the auction phase, between attempting to put together an offer that will win you the #1 disc, and managing the size of your stack so you can make competitive bids in the future.

So, long story short: great game. I think Sarah liked it. I love it. Even though I got pounded. I thought I did pretty well with a score of 83. But then Matt and Sarah each ended up with 106, and Lane beat everyone out with 108. I can't wait to play again, though.

After that, Lane headed home, and Matt and I played a hand of Give Me the Brain! that I won.

Then Sarah came back from trying (unsuccessfully, thanks to Elizabeth) to get Alex to go to sleep, and we finished the night with a 3-player game of Mystery Rummy: Rue Morgue. I jumped out in the first round to a 28-18-8 lead. Matt put the hurt on us in the next hand, taking a 72-47-35 lead. But I stormed back in the third round, and not only did I score 55 points to end the game, but I also achieved a shutout, putting the final scores at 102 (me), 72 (Matt), 35 (Sarah).

Weekend gaming recap: Über alles.

Just recapping this weekend's games. Who won what, etc. I've been pretty lazy about that lately. Or is it that I've been actually working at work?

Friday (10/27)

Sarah had to work (boo!), so it was just Matt and myself. First we played 4 games of our modified Give Me the Brain!, splitting the series 2-2.

Then we tried out the Settlers of Catan Card Game that Matt gave me for my birthday. It was pretty good; Matt won 12-7. It definitely has the Settlers "feel" to it, and is a better 2-player game than classic Settlers (Though I think I like Starship Catan better.)

After that, we pulled out another of my birthday gifts: Mystery Rummy: Jekyll & Hyde. Sarah and I had played this once, and both liked it. I hammered Matt the first hand, and the rest of the game was fairly balanced, but that first round gave me the victory.

Finally, we ended with a game of "Über-Carcassonne" -- played with all of the American expansions: The River, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, The King, The Count, The River II, The Princess & the Dragon, and the newest, Matt's birthday present: The Tower. With 2 players, it wasn't too bad; took us about 2.5 hours, factoring out all baby-related distractions. Matt beat me by just over 100 points, and I had over 300. I have to say, playing with the Tower and the Count makes for some evil, evil combos. (Like when Matt placed a tile to complete my giant city, placed a tower on that tile to capture my follower, and then sent one of his own followers in from Carcassonne to take all those points. Evil.

Saturday (10/28)

Matt and I played 2 games of Give Me the Brain! (which Matt won) and 1 game of Nexus (which I won) before Sarah joined us.

Then we played Through the Desert for the first time in a while. I took the fewest oasis points, and got probably 2nd place in watering holes, but I captured a bit of area, and got 3 of the 5 longest caravans, winning the game with a just handful of points more than Sarah.

Our game of St. Petersburg (with The Banquet expansion) after that went the opposite way: I led early in the game, thanks to a key building purchase in the first round, and actually was in the lead once the game ended. But then we calculated Aristocrat points, and Sarah jumped ahead by a dozen points.

We ended with a 3-player game of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper. I had a great first hand, but then actually lost half those points the second hand, and never caught back up to the others. Sarah won; oddly, a common theme for her with games she purports not to like.

Saturday gaming recap: Cities & Cards.

(Can you tell I'm playing catch-up today?)

Saturday night, Lane came over to play some games. We had already played Tempus with him on Thursday night -- this time with all the correct rules, we think. The result of that was that Sarah won, I lost, and Lane came out in the middle. It is a great game; it'll be interesting to see how it plays with 4 or 5. I'm sure Matt will want to play it now that he's back from Germany.

Anyway: Saturday. First we played a game of Settlers of Catan, but with a variant I'm working on using my "metropolis" hex. I want to get it polished up for the Settlers scenario design contest, and the obvious next step was to actually play the variant. It really worked out well; the new hex changes some of the game strategies in interesting ways. I ended up winning with 13 points: on my final turn, I grabbed the Longest Road and built a settlement worth double points in the center of the metro hex. And the game itself only took 45 minutes to play. It'll be interesting to see how it plays with 4; I'm also wondering if the VP goal should be bumped up to 15...

After that, we decided to play a couple of quickish card games. First we introduced Lane to Die Fugger, a game about selling goods and influencing the market price thereof. I had forgotten how good a game it was, especially with 3 players. The final round was the best fun I've had playing the game yet, with a lot of cutthroat maneuvering as we tried to manipulate the different goods prices to our advantage. I won, followed by Lane, with Sarah a distant third.

We wrapped up the night with Res Publica, one of Lane's favorites, and one of the group's favorite end-of-the-night games. Sarah and I both took off early, building 2 cities quickly, while Lane struggled to build his first. Then Sarah and I alternated grabbing the first few monuments before Lane broke in on the monument-building scene. But I couldn't keep up with Sarah, and she won it in the end.

Thursday gaming recap: Teubered with.

Sarah went to the Metrodome to watch the feeble-batting Twins lose 7-2 to the Tigers. Meanwhile, Matt came over to play some games.

We started with a game of Elasund, the latest game in the Catan series. It's by far the most confrontational game in the series, and though it seems to start slowly, it's not a long game at all. I think our 2-player game took just over half an hour, and we've done 3-player games in around 45 minutes -- making it easily the fastest-playing Catan game out there. It is pretty strategy-heavy, though, and you have a lot of options each turn. Yet it also seems fairly dependent on the roll of the dice, especially at the beginning. I like the game, but I don't think it's quite as deep as a lot of people make it out to be.

After I won (by the way) we played 3 games of Nexus. Matt won the first one (as usual), but I caught him sleeping and stole the 2nd game out from under his nose by scoring a 10-point nexus. On the tiebreaker, we were both sitting at 11 points (we play to 12) when Matt drew a card to get him 3 points and win the game. My next card would have gotten me 3 points as well, making it probably the closest game I've played.

To end the night, we tried Starship Catan, a 2-player game in the Catan series. Matt had never played before, so it took a little time to explain. It's a fairly simple game, but there's a lot of pieces and cards, and the gameplay is fairly involved. I had played 2 games before with Sarah, winning both, and I beat Matt this time, purchasing 3 level-2 modules, taking the "Hero of Catan" VP card, and founding 5 colonies. I really like this one; the exploration is fun, trying to remember what planets are in which sector, and it's got a good money/resource-management system, too. Games seem to run a little on the long side (over 1.5 hours) but at the same time, the end of the game comes quickly.

Don't know how much I'll play over the next week; Matt's headed to Germany for a week...

Weekend gaming recap: 500, baby!

It was a long weekend, but not long enough. Couple that with me being sick yesterday, and I haven't gotten a chance to update in a while. But tonight's game night, so I better log last weekend games before that happens!

Friday

Lane and Sarah and Matt came over for french bread pizzas. Oh my, were those good. First I stuffed my piece of french bread with mozzarella, then topped it with sauce, pepperoni, pork sausage, pineapple, green pepper, orange pepper, green olives, mushrooms, more mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan. So good...

After that, since we had 5 players, we played a game of Oriente. It's so much more fun with 5 than with 4. We definitely need to try it with 6-7 sometime. Oh yeah, and I won; mainly by getting the Shogun in my treasure stack with the Daimyo's ability (take a card off the deck -- I think that's Daimyo, anyway.) It's such a great game, though; it's now up at the top of my wishlist.

We debated a second game of Oriente, but decided to do a 5-player game of Seafarers of Catan instead. We played the 5-player "Oceans" scenario, but mixed my "Catan: The River" tiles into the mainland, which seems to have had the effect of limiting movement on the mainland. Matt almost got cut off entirely in the early game, only to come back and win with 13 points, including the Longest Road and Largest Army. I believe I came in last, having positioned my first settlements poorly, and getting very few cards all game long (and those I did receive often got stolen by my wife!)

Matt and I played 7 more games of Give Me The Brain! afterwards, and though I don't remember the exact count, I won the majority of them.

Saturday

Sarah worked Saturday evening, so Matt came over and we played a game of Polarity. Matt made a fault early on, handing me a 2-point tower, and that was all I needed. I never made a fault, and cruised to a victory. I'm pretty sure I won a game against him a long time ago, but that still makes it only his third loss ever. It felt pretty good.

We then played 9 games of Give Me The Brain! throughout the night, with our first 3 expansions mixed in (as usual). Again, I took the majority, though the numbers elude me. The important part is that I logged my 500th game played of GMTB! on BoardGameGeek! Wow!

Much later (after Sarah got back late) Tara and our friends Mark and Tanya came over, and Mark and Tanya broke out Killer Bunnies (4 decks total), which the rest of us (minus Tara) had never played before. Sarah managed to get a lot of carrots, but it was Tanya who won at the end; she only had 2 out of the 20 carrots, but one of them was the winning one. Not a terrible game; I think the mechanic of laying your cards down 2 turns ahead of time (the "rabbit run") is quite interesting, and the rest of the cards are no more random than, say, Munchkin (which I enjoy), but the winning requirements leave something to be desired. How it works is, there are (with the expansions we used, anyway) 20 carrot cards that you try to buy throughout the game. The game ends when the last carrot is purchased, and the winner is whoever has the "magic carrot" -- the identity of which is determined before the game starts. So each carrot you buy has a 1/20 chance of being the winning carrot, and therefore the goal is to grab as many carrots as you can and thereby increase your odds of winning. But it's still essentially a crapshoot at the end. Our game (with 6 players) also dragged on for a long time, but mostly that had to do with (or so we were told) the fact that the Market -- where you buy carrots -- was closed for most of the game, making getting ahold of carrots quite difficult. Anyway, I'd be open to trying the game again, but it's not near the top of my list for games I'd like to play again.

Monday

Monday, Matt, Tara and Anita, and Steve and Becca came over for dinner. Before dinner, Matt and Sarah and I taught Anita how to play Give Me The Brain! We played with just the original deck for the first time in a long while. Sarah won.

Then we ate. Steve and Becca left shortly thereafter, and the rest of us sat down and played a game of Mamma Mia! Grande. Sarah won with 14 orders filled, while Matt and I each had 13. I believe Tara had 11 and Anita, 9, respectable scores for first-time players.

Once Tara and Anita headed home, the 3 of us (Sarah, Matt, and myself) played a quick game of Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue that I won with a shutout final round.

Thursday gaming recap: One-on-one.

Sarah ended up having to work Thursday night after supper, but Matt came over and the two of us (naturally) played some games.

We started with 4 games of Give Me The Brain! with my latest expansion ("On Schedule") mixed in. It worked out decently with 2 players, though I suspect the expansion will be more interesting with more players. I won 3 games, and Matt only 1.

Then I taught Matt Lost Cities; I pounded him the first round, and in the second round he made the mistake of starting another expedition far too late, with the result that he lost points and I was able to score more than I would have otherwise. Round 3 went far better for him, and poorly for me, as I made only 6 points. Final score: me, 85; Matt, 80. A lot closer than I was expecting it to be.

Next up was Nexus, our old 2/3-player filler before we got hooked on GMTB! Matt humiliated me the first game, and though I jumped out to an early lead in the second game, I lost that one too.

Luckily for me, we played 4 more games of GMTB! and I was able to win 2 of those, winning the series for the night, 5-3. That puts me at 486 logged games of GMTB! played, and with any luck I'll break 500 by the end of the holiday weekend!

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Tonight we'll be making french bread pizzas for supper, and hopefully I can convince people to try out my latest Settlers of Catan variant; I'd like to get it polished up for the scenario design contest.

Friday gaming recap: Out of Africa.

Lane and Matt came over again. We had the Twins game on in the background, as Minnesota beat the Chicago White Sox to take the wild card lead.

Meanwhile, we started the night with a game of Settlers of the Stone Age. I start out quickly, jumping out to an early lead by making an explorer and running around Europe picking up tiles; finding Adaptation VPs and winning the 2VP Exploration card early on. But I petered out shortly thereafter, running out of meat with which to move my explorer, and not being able to convert him into a camp until near the end of the game. Meanwhile, the other players moved out of Africa as it turned into desert. First Matt passed me in points, then Lane, and finally Sarah tied me. On the last turn, with 7 VPs, Matt moved his explorer to reveal a tile: sure enough, it was the Adaption VP for the Americas, which also took the 2-VP Exploration card from me, giving Matt the win and putting me in dead last.

After that, we finished watching the Twins win, then set up a game of Res Publica. Sarah disappeared briefly, so the rest of us (as usual) broke out Give Me The Brain! with our expansions:
I actually won that game, breaking my winless streak from last night. Then Sarah came back, and Res Publica began. It was a pretty poor showing for me, though I did build the second city, I only laid down cards once after that (building a second city and the game's second monument at the same time.) Then I couldn't do anything else until the end of the game, when I finished with 6 pairs in my hand. Final scores: Sarah, 29; Matt, 27; Me, 20; Lane, 19.

After that, Sarah went to put Alex to bed, and Matt and I convinced Lane to play one more hand of GMTB!, which Matt won. Then Lane went home, and Matt and I each won another game apiece, so we decided to play a fifth-game tiebreaker. I won the bid, dropped the Brain, won the bid, played a Butterfingers!, won the bid, played another Butterfingers!, Matt won the bid, and played his last card, Caring is Sharing -- leaving me with 1 card in my hand: also Sharing is Caring. Since that game took less than 3 minutes, we decided we might as well play a sixth, which I won. Then came the game 7 tiebreaker, which, anticlimactic as it sounds, I can't remember who won.

Thursday gaming recap: Huzzah!

Lane and Matt came over last night. After watching the Twins thwomp the Orioles, we headed to the kitchen for a game of Pirate's Cove. Steve gave this to Sarah for her birthday, but we hadn't played her copy yet. (Matt owns the first edition, which has seen 4-5 plays.) One thing's for sure: the revised rulebook in the second printing is a huge improvement. I do miss the grid on the mapboard, though, even if it was completely pointless. It was pretty.

Anyway, Sarah and I both got off to a great start, but around midgame, I had a couple unfortunate battles that pretty much put me out of the game. Sarah, meanwhile, beefed her ship up until she was ready to take on (and defeat) Blackbeard at the end. Sarah won, followed by Lane, Matt, and lastly myself.

Then, while Sarah tried putting Alex to sleep, Lane and Matt and I played 4 hands of Give Me The Brain! with our finished expansion cards. Matt had brought over the final graphics printed out on sticker paper, and I cut them out and adhered them to a spare GMTB! deck. The new cards look incredible, and it's so much fun to play. (Hence the "Huzzah!" in the post title.) In the first 4 games last night, Matt won 3 and Lane won 1, with Lane ending the first 2 hands with the Trophy of Dubious Merit. Then Sarah joined us for a fifth and final hand, which lasted close to half an hour, and was quite possibly the best 4-handed game of GMTB! I've ever played. Lane won it, and I had my first winless night in who knows how long.

I will be getting files for the GMTB! expansions uploaded to BoardGameGeek (and linked here) soon, it's now just a matter of compressing the images so the file sizes aren't as ridiculous as they are currently. I'll have pictures up even sooner.

Weekend gaming recap: Trains, Brains, & Catanians.

A fair bit o' gaming over the weekend. I'll break it down day by day:

Thursday

Matt wasn't feeling well, but Lane and Tara were over. Matt doesn't do "traditional" card games, but Sarah, Tara, Lane and I do (we played a lot of cards in college) so I convinced them to give Wizard a try. Steve gave it to Sarah for Christmas, but it had yet to be played.

First off, about the game. It's a standard deck of cards (minus the Jokers), with 8 new cards: 4 Wizards and 4 Jesters. It's played basically like the old trick-taking game Up and Down the River (aka Oh Hell!) where trump is random each hand, and you bid on how many tricks you're going to take. The main difference is that Wizards and Jesters are wild, and can be played at any time. A Wizard always takes the trick, and a Jester always loses the trick. These come in handy, because you're punished if you don't take the exact number of tricks you bid.

So it was a lot of fun. The scoring system kept everyone in the game for all 15 rounds. I pretty much ran away with it at the end, but missed a single trick in the final round and got beat. The Wizards and Jesters add a lot more to the game than it would at first appear. Highly recommended if you enjoy trick-taking card games.

Friday

Matt felt better Friday, and came over. Steve and Becca also showed up, we all had pizza, and apparently Becca's favorite game is Cities & Knights, so we set up a 5-player game of that. The game took a long time, partly due to the crummy way the number tokens ended up. Matt, Steve, and Becca each got a metropolis, and though scores were relatively close at the end, Becca ended up winning fairly easily.

Matt and I also played 3 hands of Give Me the Brain! (with our expansions), of which I won 2.

Saturday

Just Matt came over Saturday night. We hit Pannekoeken Huis for dinner, where we played a game of Pass the Pigs while waiting for our food. Everyone rolled really poorly for a long time, even after Matt took an early lead. But then Sarah jumped ahead, and I began slowly making way up, point-wise. We cut the game short when food arrived, and Sarah thought she had won -- but Matt had surpassed her by a couple of points!

Upon arriving home, Matt and I played a couple hands of Give Me the Brain! with expansions, including one that ran through the entire 157-card deck and took close to half an hour. I won the first 2, Matt won the next 3. By the end of the night, we had evened it out a 4 to 4, but Matt won the decisive 9th game.

With Sarah, we played Ticket to Ride: Marklin, one of Sarah's current favorites. I intentionally cut off one of Sarah's routes early on (in retaliation for her unintentionally cutting me off) and it ended up costing her points at game's end and handing me the win. Boy, she was pretty grumpy with me for a while.

We also played a game of Sole Mio! which I won easily, and a game of Mystery Rummy: Murders in the Rue Morgue that Sarah ended up winning.

Sunday

Lane came over, and on Sarah's request brought Ticket to Ride: Europe over with him. I won by a wide margin, having ended the game far earlier than the other two were happy with.

Then we decided on a game of 3-player Settlers of Catan, and I suggested playing with my homemade "River" expansion. I had made the expansion a year ago, and it had only been played once -- and that with the paper prototype tiles, not the nice high-quality ones I made shortly thereafter. Lane had never played it before, and had shown interest in the past, so we tried it out. It worked out quite well. We played to 11 points, and Lane reached that in under an hour, thanks to 3 hexes of his that gave him 3-4 cards each, allowing him to build cities quickly.

At the very least, it got me to back to work on getting the instructions for the expansion finished up, and hopefully I'll have it ready and published to BoardGameGeek in the next week or so.

Sarah and I ended the night with a game of Lost Cities. I scored 75, 75, and 72 in the three rounds, soundly beating her 222 to 93, and winning for the first time since I-can't-even-remember-when. I intend to relish my victory while it lasts.

Saturday gaming recap: Two-thirds loser.

Sarah had to work a double-shift today, so it was just me and the kids most of the day. Matt came over in the evening, and when I finally got Elizabeth to nap, and Alex was being content (for the moment) we broke out Diceland: Deep White Sea for the first time since we started logging games at BoardGameGeek over a year and a half ago.

We played 3 games, random teams each time, and no obstacles, as I think we were both feeling a bit rusty. Matt jumped out to a 21-0 lead in the first game, though I eventually tied it up in a single, devastating blast. But he went on to win 57-42 (with 57 being the most points possible against my team.) I pounded on him the second game, winning with a humiliating 54-14 score. But he returned the favor in the final game, and did so by keeping only his 2 robot dice alone on the table almost the entire game: I would throw a die out, be unable to do much of anything, and then on Matt's turn, he'd kill it. He won handily, 51-18, and the game would have been much shorter had I not thrown 3-4 dice off the table. Cumulative score for the three games: Matt, 122. Chris, 104.

After that, we sat down (as usual) for some Give Me the Brain!, with our "Unpaid Overtime" and "In Character" expansions mixed in. (Just a few color tweaks, and the sets should be finalized within the next week or two.) I took the first 2 games quickly, but Matt went on to win the next 4 games, making excellent use of the Joey Character card that allows you to play a random card from your hand at the cost of a single Hand. He also managed to end the last game with the Trophy of Dubious Merit in play, so he'll get to bid last the next time we play.

1-for-3 in Diceland, 2-for-6 in GMtB! I guess it just wasn't my night.