If Babe Ruth was chased by zombies (Last Night on Earth)

To celebrate Halloween we played Last Night on Earth, a game that I enjoy well enough but only really gets played this time of year.

Me and Kozure were the zombies, Pablo and Shemp were the humans.

The last few times we've played this it's been on irregular maps, so playing the "Save the Townsfolk" scenario felt a little like a throwback.
Since the hero's objective is to keep searching until they find 4 townsfolk, the actual gameplay boiled down to: run to the other side of the board, where the zombies aren't, and then search. Ok, the zombies are close again, run back to the other side. For whatever reason, I don't recall previous games to be this way.

Anyway, the back and forth running went inform a while, occasionally (ok, frequently) peppered by Johnny blasting a zombie with his endlessly loaded shotgun. As the zombies, we were having a hard time cornering the heroes, so we weren't managing to damage them much. In thelastthird of the game, the hero's had found the villagers and were trying to survive until morning. Three of the heroes had taken refuge in the gun store in the corner, trying to keep the horde of undead at bay. It was quite close in the end, but the heroes prevailed because only one of them fell victim to the zombies.

The highlight of the game, for me, was when Johnny the jock sprinted through a wall of zombies. He attacked one and rolled a 5. Pablo, who was playing John, needed anything except a 5 or a 6. Oddly, he yelled "roll a 2!". The zombies did roll a 2 and Pablo nearly jumped out of his hair in excitement.

Clearly, comparisons between Johnny and Babe Ruth's famous prediction were earned and given...

Metal fatigue is a harsh mistress (Galaxy Trucker, Power Grid w/ alternate power plants)

The recent announcement of another expansion for Galaxy Trucker reminded me it had been a while since we had played this great game. I though it would be fun to try a really punishing series of flights, so we skipped round 1 entirely and instead did the following:

Ship 2 with evil machinations
Ship 3 with evil machinations and 2 Rough Road Ahead cards
Ship 3A with evil machinations and 2 Rough Road Ahead cards

The first round went pretty smoothly, but starting with round 2 we really started feeling the heat. The rough road cards are pretty tough... Round 2 had a card that made any energy use cost an extra tic-tac and another card that reduced our ship's speed for every ship connection that matched a 3 connector with a 2 or a 1. As you can imagine, ship building was slow and batteries/ furnaces where hot commodities.

... But we all made it without horrible consequences. My MVP was certainly the techie blue alien, since it made the first battery expenditure each encounter free.

Round three saw Remorseless fate (which is every bit as bad as it sounds) and Metal Fatigue. Now, between remorseless fate and metal fatigue, I thought the first sounded the most dangerous. Shemp would beg to differ.

Before launching, Shemp pointed out that this was his best ship ever. No bad connections, plenty of the tiles he wanted, every space used up. The problem is that ship 3A looks a lot like the Enterprise... It's got a very narrow middle. A single mishap there, and the ship splits in half. During the second event, Shemp lost a piece which protected the critical part through metal fatigue and then in event 3 a meteor struck and Shemp had to pick whether he wanted to keep flying with the front or the back of his ship. He chose the front.

When Shemp arrived at the end, he had approximately 5 tiles left in his ship, a single crew member, and no engines ( he lost his final one on the last card). It was pretty funny. Also, since ship 3 A is uninsurable, he paid nearly 30$ for the damage.

Ultimately, Kozure won the game. I actually thought I had it, but he snuck past me by a few points. I really enjoy this every time it comes out, even though it's definitely an experience game and not to be taken seriously.

Power Grid

We then played a three player game of Power Grid with the new power plants expansion (the expansion isn't new, only new to us). Although I enjoy Power Grid, I find it requires too much constant calculation which kind of ruins the pace. Also, I dislike the lull that seems to often happen during the middle of the game because nobody ever wants to by the middle powerplants. Apparently, the solution is to play with only 3 players and use the alternate plants because I found this game quite enjoyable.

It's hard to pick out the differences, but I never felt like nothing on offer was worth buying. We did have an odd result because many of the higher plants got pulled before the start ofthegame (as per the 3 player rules). This led to an end game where only I actually could power the 17 cities once they were built. I unintentionally foiled Shemp's hail Mary to beat me because he planned on buying up the resources preventing me from actually powering to capacity. I decided at the last minute not to power all my cities on the before last turn and kept the resources I needed for the last round so I did pull off the win.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know if the new plants simply have a lower capacity and the struggle to attain 17 is intentional. Either way, it was fun.

Shempuzelan TV is more entertaining than Easylander jousting (Civilization, King of Tokyo)

We played another three player session of the new Sid Meier's Civilization. It was Kozure, Shemp and I as Russia, Egyptians and Americans (respectively).

I was flailing around, not really having much success getting a strategy going (poor choices in city locations meant that the available resources were a touch thin). I purchased the Hanging gardens early so my military was easy to come by, so I went that way. Kozure had quite a productive empire, but also his military was surpassing me in technology. Shemp, meanwhile, was racing after a cultural victory.

Since no one had ever come close to wining with culture, it was not a threat we saw coming. Suddenly, Shemp was on the verge of winning! Kozure and I tried to stop him but Shemp was generating culture points too quickly. A last ditch attempt to thwart him was interrupted by his cultural superiority (he proposed we watched tv, when all we could offer was offer Jousting).

Anyway, Shemp won!

We ended off with another game of King of Tokyo. This one is getting lots of play in and out of WAGS.