Sunday, March 27, 2005

Orange Bot Twenty

This week we went back to Puerto Rico for a couple of four player games, had three quick rounds of the Formula Motor Racing card game, and chowed down on the trailer park special - WonderBread HotDogs w/ instant MacNCheese!

If there was a theme here, it eluded me. Enlightenment appreciated.

Puerto Rico is a fabulous game, and I was surprised to see that we've only played in on WAGS night once before. Easy was absent from our session this week, so I decided to honour him by busting out the Percieved Standard Easy German Game Strategy in our first round of Puerto Rico.

What is the PSEGGS? Find some way to earn victory points that isn't directly tied to the main purpose of the game, focus on it, and hope no one notices.

Did it work? It did. In our first round, I was able to pile up some money quick, buy three of the large buildings, ship very little, end things by maxing out my village, and still pull out the victory. I'm not too sure what the scores were, but Kozure kept track - hopefully he will jump in on the comments with that info.

In our second round, our Puerto Rico minds were limbered up, and things flowed a lot better, resulting in a closer game. Tili managed to buy 2 large buildings (compared to one each for the rest of us), and it propelled her to a narrow victory, with a very impressive sixty points! I had abandonded the victory points through building strategy, focusing on shipping out diversified crops and earning $$ through a factory. It worked fairly well, but consistantly shipping out goods without benefitting other players was pretty difficult.

What continues to impress me about Puerto Rico is that there are a vast number of different ways to earn your victory points, and it seems that the efficacy of different strategies are very well balanced. Whoever does a good job of developing their plan and sticking to it will (while remaining able to react to other players' actions) be right in the thick of things come the endgame.

Easy, I'm upping my score on this to a 10. THAT'S RIGHT - A 10.

Now, Formula Motor Racing is a fun little game, and Kozure, L, and I blew through three rounds. The interesting thing about this game with three players, is that there are also three unplayed teams in the competition - we refer to them as "'bots", as in a video game. The human players focused on screwing over each other, and at the end of two rounds, the Orange Bot was in first place with Twenty points! In the third round we all took turns punishing the Orange Bot, and Luch was able to bring his total points up to Twenty-One, for a narrow victory over No One, who managed to beat both Kozure and me. The Red cars were our stand in for Easy. They came very, very last.

It was agreed that this game would be BEST played slightly intoxicated. Still good without being intoxicated, but not quite ideal.

To sum up: Very fun night, as we settle into rounds of playing games we are already familiar with.

1 comment:

  1. Well, to begin, I'm very honoured to be recognized by the term "PSEGGS". Sure, one would hope for a catchier one (heck, even something that doesn't sound like breakfast), but it's great none-the-less.

    As for Puerto Rico, it is a very good game. I find that the system is extremely original and elegant. I wish that there weren't so many little pieces, though (it's a bit of a pain to set up). Aslo, a certain part of me feels that all the buildings with text functions are a bit of a cop out. No big deal, though.

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