Wishing for Gold (Pandemic, Beowulf, Dominion: Intrigue)

Still three players.

Pandemic

Since Pandemic was dropped from the lineup last week, I brought it again. Shemp picked it as our first game and we went with the mutation challenge (a.k.a. purple cube expansion). We had the dispatcher, the troubleshooter and the researcher.

Side note: Troubleshooter= awesome.

Things started out pretty leisurely, actually. Red was cured quickly and blue followed. The troubleshooter's ability to see where problems are going to be and then go there is very powerful. Suddenly, things started getting hairy and we were struggling to stay on top. We managed to get the four basic cures done, but purple still eluded us. I had five cards to spend to cure it, but none featured cities infected by purple, so I couldn't finish it. We drew the action card that allowed us to fish into the discard and drew what we needed to finish the game. After we won, I checked the infection cards to see what I would have drawn at the end of my turn... we would have lost the game because of an outbreak of Yellow in Johannesburg.

Close. Fun.

Beowulf

Beowulf made a rare repeat appearance. After last week's experiment to see if it played well with three (it did), it was nice to play it again. I unfortunately was unable to repeat last week's win, however. As the game was coming to a conclusion, I felt confident I would win the "battle with the dragon" episode. Kozure had pulled out, and it was me and Shemp left. I had the "All Iron Shield" (4 swords) and "Sword Hrunting" (3 swords), plus a few others. I lost. We had a good laugh at the odd turn of events, and it cost me a significant amount of points, but Shemp had a commanding lead regardless and it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game.

As usual, this was a lot of fun. It's a nice mix of card management and luck.

Dominion: Intrigue

The closer for the evening was an all-intrigue Dominion. Shemp selected a deck called "Secrets and betrayal" (or something like that). All the cards with names like "Saboteur", "Shanty Town", etc, were in the deck. I won the game, so I hate saying that I played semi-randomly, but that's what happened. There was a memorable round where I drew my wishing well and wished for a "gold" treasure and drew it (remarkable because I only had one). I purchased a province and then immediately had to trash it as Shemp played his saboteur and my newly shuffled deck happened to have it on top. Easy come, easy go, I guess. I narrowly beat Kozure and we had a discussion afterwards about the danger of buying the Harem cards (2 VPs/ 2 treasure) near the end of the game... Duchies are worth 3 VPs for the same price but are dead weight. I had been buying them for some time, thinking the game was ending but it took longer than I thought and my deck was becoming inefficient (Shemp mentioned that the same thing was happening to him).

I've heard good things about the upcoming Prosperity expansion. We'll have to see how that plays out.

Threeny Madness! (Ra, Glory to Rome, Beowulf, Dominion)

Shemp's pick this week, and he went for Threeny Madness (a play on "weeny madness", the name we used to give Magic decks that focussed on many small creatures). Turns out many of the games played aren't particularly "weeny", but what can you do?

Ra

First up was Ra, with Tilli playing instead of Kozure. Auction games are often subject to groupthink, and so I think everyone was somewhat surprised at how differently me and Shemp evaluated things compared to Tilli (who would typically play outside our group). In particular, it is my habit to purchase many smaller lots early rather than go long and hope for quantity. At first, it looked like it was a losing strategy... Tilli had a huge first round and Shemp and I scored very little. As the game wore on, Ra looked with dissaproval at those wanting quantity over quality and rewarded me with an enormous last round for the win.

Glory to Rome

Kozure stepped back in and Shemp chose perennial favorite Glory to Rome. I've often said that this game is characterized by a new "unbalanced" combo every game. Just to prove me wrong, this session didn't have that. We were all building away and minding our own business when suddenly all the building sites had been used and the game ended. Another odd thing: None of us had a single piece of material in the vault. Shemp thought he had me based on the influence I had gathered from building, but what he hadn't noticed was that I had built the ... (I don't recall the name, but it gives me 1 VP for each 2 materials in the stockpile). This sneakery allowed me to surpass Shemp by 1 and win the game.

Beowulf

A few weeks ago we were wondering if Beowulf with 3 would be any good. Having now played it, I must say that it is! Knizia distributed the episodic rewards very well so that there is as much interest in the 3 player auction as the 4 or 5 player.

In the early episodes, luck was shining on Shemp as he was making out quite well at all the risking challenges. Kozure also appeared to have a persistently large hand of cards. I struggled early in the game but game but found my footing about a third of the way. Through sheer dumb luck I won an episode with a single card from my hand. This reward allowed me to snowball my successes and soon I felt like I was doing really well. Going into the battle with the dragon, I had a hand of 10-15 cards ALL of which could be used in the battle (i.e. just fists and axes and wilds). I don't often do well at this game, but clearly this was my evening!

Dominion

We ended, as we often do, with Dominon. Shemp noticed that the was a themed deck called "Hand Madness!", so being unable to resist the tie in with the evening's theme he chose it. As you'd expect, it's a deck that has players manipulating the number of cards in their own and their opponent's hands quite a lot. Dominion is another game I typically don't do well in, but unfortunately this time the result was in line with the odds... I came in last after an unsuccessful attempt to pull off a bureaucrat + Council room combo. It didn't help that Shemp was constantly playing Militias to keep my handsize down. I unfortunately do not remember who actually did win, however.

New Record Set!! (Battle Line, Dominion, Dominion:Intrigue, Race for the Galaxy

So, they were going to play Cyclades, which was Kozure's selection, as he was dictator this week.

Unfortunately, I didn't show up until 11pm. I was stuck at a function that should have been over at 9pm. Oh well.

Kozure and Shemp played Battle Line and Dominion/ Dominion: Intrigue, and from the sounds of it they played quite a few times.

(Shemp started this post, and I'm publishing it to keep them all in order. I presume his title refers to many games played)

When I arrived, we played another game of Dominion and then Kozure and I had a hand of Race for the Galaxy.

Sorry, not very interesting, but there it is.

Well, I won the dice game... (Mexica, Dominion: Intrigue x2)

Shemp took a page from Luch's playbook and has decided to select the same thing for a few picks in a row. Whereas Luch was picking Die Macher, Shemp chose Mexica and Tikal for the second time.

However, just like last time, we only actually played one of the two (Mexica, in this case).

Mexica

At the end of our last session of this, Shemp remarked that there would be nothing preventing a player from placing buildings all around the board right from the starting space (before any canals were up). He decided to try this out, despite the obvious danger of getting the buildings he put out there surrounded and rendered useless. It worked fairly well. By placing buildings in every corner he ensured that he had a presence in all the regions we were creating around the board. We nicknamed the technique "carpet bombing the board". I suppose we could have spent points to put canals around them and cut him off, but there is so much you want to do in the game that it seemed too inefficient.

The board developed is a fairly screwy way. It was a mess of canals, and the land was nearly choked out well before the end of the game. I kept playing defensively, placing buildings in front of the bridges I built, etc. It meant that I ended up having to spend most turns teleporting... a rather inefficient way of playing.

Shemp built a commanding lead, and won the game in a distant first place. Kozure was in second place while me and Bharmer brought up the rear (of course, he had never played before... I had no such excuse).

Dominion/ Dominion: Intrigue

The Mexica game lasted a couple of hours, so we didn't really have time for Tikal. Shemp requested our latest go-to game for this situation... Dominion.

In our first session, we had the Saboteur, the Torturer, the Swindler and other similar types. There were no extra buys, and few extra actions. It was looking like it would be a long, drawn out affair. I latched onto buying lots of swindlers, and managed to play one just about every round in the game. This put a lot of curses into people's hands, it was burning through the stacks of cards on the table, but wasn't really getting me anywhere. I ended the game by exhausting 3 piles of cards, something that rarely happens in our group. Unfortunately, I was hoping to do it before people started buying provinces but it didn't work. When the game ended, we all scored pretty low but I was dead last with only 10 points. Bharmer won.

As an aside, we were arbitrarily rolling an 8 sided die and two 6 sided dice to determine turn order (geek enough for ya?). Going into this session, I rolled 20. This would be the pinnacle of my achievements this evening.

In the second session, things were more upbeat. There was festival, laboratory and others that provided plenty of additional actions and buys. I had an idea to combine the bridge and the workshop, allowing me to take duchies each time I made the combo. It worked pretty well, but it wasn't enough. I came in second with 32 points, while Bharmer (again) won... this time only ahead of me by 3.

So, I ended the evening winless. My biggest success was the dice game for turn order. Sigh.

Roll 'em, pardner (Dice Town x2, Dominion x2)

It was Kozure's pick, and he was in the mood for fast, low fuss games.

Dice Town

A few weeks ago I participated in a math trade where I was looking to shift Dungeon Lords. It's a hot game right now, so I probably could have been greedy and held out for something valuable but I saw someone offering Dice Town. It sounded like a lot of fun so I went for it (I'm discovering that it's rather hard to find, so even better).

At home it's been an instant hit. My son LOVES this game. My sister, who doesn't particularly like games, likes this one. I like it, too.

Dice Town is a dice rolling game set in the old west. Players roll 5 custom dice with pictures of playing cards (9s to aces), hoping to set up combinations that will net them some goods. Everyone rolls there dice simultaneously and picks on to keep. Then they reveal what they kept, and roll the remaining four dice and keep one. This goes on until all five dice have been selected. Optionally, a player may pay 1$ per die to keep more than one die on a given roll.

Most 9s = gold nuggets
Most 10s = rob the bank
Most jacks = draw cards at the general store
Most queens = Steal cards from another player
Most kings = become the sheriff (sheriff breaks ties)
Best poker hand = Get land claims

If you got nothing on a turn, you visit "doc badluck" and receive a consolation prize (note that some of these are good enough to make intentionally visiting doc badluck a valid strategy on some occasions)

Nuggets, money, land claims and some general store cards are worth VPs. Most VPs win the game.

This game is easy to explain, plays relatively quickly, and is a lot of fun. There is a small amount of strategy, as it's important to pick your battles and spy what opportunities exist for getting lots of stuff with little effort. For example, if everyone is going for best poker hand, then a single 9, 10 and jack can land you gold, the money in the bank and a card from the general store. Similarly, if someone appears to be going for 9s (to get gold nuggets) and has more than you, pursuing 9s will likely yield nothing. Having said that, Doc Badluck can be a viable option in some cases and a player might well decide that it's beneficial to follow someone in a category they cannot win to make sure they get to visit the doctor... one of the doc's "remedies" is a gold nugget from each player, for example, if you can finish the hand with at least one ace and still win nothing.

It might have been fun if more combinations/ goals were at play, such as rewarding players for getting straights or whatever. Not a big deal, though.

We played two sessions, and although I had a strong start in the first one Kozure managed to beat us all on both occasions. Everyone enjoyed it, we'll see if it becomes a staple!

Dominion

Speaking of staples, Kozure followed up Dice Town with Dominon/ Dominon:Intrigue. This was the first time I had played with both expansions mixed together, and the first time I had played with the expansion since I realized I liked the base game (I played the expansion first, and was lukewarm to it). Having played the basic system a few times now, the expansion did not seem as intimidating as it did previously. I would say that on the balance I still prefer the simplicity of the basic cards, though I could see that with repeated play the different possibilities offered by Intrigue would be appealing.

In the first game I tried to build an engine where I would have several high gold cards in my deck and then use the "adventurers" card to constantly get more of that gold into my hand. I managed to purchase a number of Provinces this way, but couldn't prevent a loss. In the second, I floundered badly as I tried to make coppersmith work for me but it didn't. I lost badly.

Did Kozure win both Dominion games, too? Good night for him...