Summertime Rolls

WARNING THIS IS A BUNCH OF WORDS BARFED ON THE BLOG AND IT MIGHT BE EDITED LATER I'M NOT PLANNING ON MAKING ANYONE'S COMMENTS LOOK SILLY THOUGH EDITING BUT IT COULD HAPPEN Y'KNOW? ANYWAY HERE GOES:

You know, at the end of every summer I think: "The board game playing group just doesn't work very well in the summer. Maybe we should take the summer off, and just start again in September..." And this is when you, dear reader, look at our last post, see it was in May, and think: "They took the summer off."

But we did not! Though things have been fairly haphazard. I'll attempt to recap what I can recall now.

LAST week, 'twas Easy and I and special guest Aussie Tim, in from Australia. We tried to keep things light + easy for our semin00b, and went with Galaxy Trucker, Kingdom Builder, and a new, Africana. [In retrospect, Easy, how did we not think to select King of Tokyo? We should have selected King of Tokyo!]

Africana had the feel of a slightly trickier Ticket to Ride, with a set collection aspect to scoring overlaid on the route completion mechanic. On the lighter side of things, but well done and quite fun. The end certainly came unexpectedly, and Easy won by a fair chunk, which wasn't how I thought the game was going, so there is some surprise there, also. [For the record, Easy swept that week, the third week in Aug]

Moving backwards, in the 2nd week of August, we played a 3 player round of *** some fantasy themed block game that Kozure owns, which comes in VHS style boxes *** Wizard Kings, which we adjourned w/ Easy in the clear lead. At the moment I don't have any clear thoughts on the game, as could be guessed by my earlier inability to remember it's name. I suppose I think it's a playable [meaning adequately non fiddly] fantasy wargamelite. And was fine, but kind of unmemorable.

Before that, Easy and I had a 2 player game of Vikings, the advanced version. [ The rules call this the "Progress Version", which nomenclature we spent a little time making fun of. ] The advanced version really does make decision making within the game much more difficult, particularly in the areas of resource management. Uncertainty is also upped through the special tiles won by buying the most expensive combo available. I like this version a lot, and managed to jump out to an early lead and hold on, thanks to picking up the tile that grants a bonus for nobles early on.

Further back, the 1st week of August, I wasn't there, and don't know what happened in Toronto. I did see this:

HM NOW JULY.

Fourth week of July, Last Will, along w/ MARIA. As Austria I pursued a bad strategy, and paid for it. Both other powers were in a victory position, tho I don't remember which technically took the game. I'm glad Last Will got another try, but don't think I'll be selecting it again. It's in the no man's land for me, too long and fiddly to be filler, not quite thinky enough or fun enough to be a main course.

Third week of July, BIOS MEGAFAUNA + Wildlife. A C&P: Megafauna, I knowingly took a risk and it failed due to randomness, throwing me into a spiral of larger risks, each of which failed. I'm OK w/ that, intellectually. Tho it stunk as an experience.

Wildlife, I played suboptimally, and would like another chance. Plus, it's fun and we hadn't played it in five years or somesuch.

Second week of July, I was absent, and am unsure of what happened. I DID hear that Bharmer has an impressive beard; the question remains, is it silky? I hope it's silky.

First week of July there was NO WAGS. NONE.

JUNE

Last week of June, I flaked, and Easy + Bharmer did something, I think?

Third week of June was RISK: LEGACY + Beowulf. I like the Risk Legacy. I need to get it on the table, w/ 4 or 5 players. I am kind of obsessed. In game three on our Earth, Easy in North America was targeted by the other 3 players, with Kozure attacking thru Alaska, Pablo thru Central America, and me through Greenland. I ended up winning by capturing the Easylander's HQ, which Kozure then fell JUST short of taking from me. Seeing that he was on the verge of trading in cards for a red star, I took a chance on launching 2 fronts from Europe, and took both remaining HQ's for the victory. Which means we got to open the "sign the board twice" packet, which is was pretty exciting.

Beowulf is always fun. Swedish betrayal, y'all. HM. Next RISK city is being put in Scandinavia and being named Betrayal. Book it. Unless it's something else of course.

Second week of June was three players, I was there, it happened. I don't know what happened. I am old. :(

First week of June we played 1812! I remember that week! Good game, really enjoyed it, and I'm not a wargame guy so much. Or I haven't been. Maybe en route to becoming one?

MAY

Last week of May, we played Luna, Innovation, and Kingdom Builder. I don't need to talk about Kingdom Builder, I am mostly indifferent towards Innovation, and I thought Luna was another middling Euro, but with neatish mechanics. Would play again.

Week before that, Civilization, with Kozure, Shemp, Pablo [does he have a nom de blog?] An email fragment: Went well, by which I mean: Miltary Victory by ME as the Germans. Kozure's Russia was, erm, less successful. Pablo enjoyed a learning game as the Americans, mainly getting the hang of the mechanics. Had an error in that the Wonders came out in random order, rather than sorted by era. Will look fwd to trying 4 players.

Week before that, was Eclipse, I was absent, there was a guest teaching the game - JOTORA?

Week before that, was Civilization and Last Will, with 3. AND that's as caughtupish as I can get us.

...post peters out here. Contributers who wish to expand in comments would be welcome. MOST WELCOME. -LONG ABSENT FROM BLOGGING SHEMP

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.

Popular opinion wins (Mare Nostrum: Mythlogy expansion, Galaxy Trucker)

Last week, there was a brief exchange in the comments section about other games that might be better points of comparison for Cyclades than RISK. Although the commenter suggested Antike, I felt that ultimately it was Mare Nostrum w/ mythology expansion. Mare Nostrum is a game that was well liked when we played it a few times in the fall, but now with only three players it wasn’t getting any table time. For the sake of comparison and contrast, I suggested we try it out despite BGG’s unanimous warnings against it.
Mare Nostrum: Mythology expansion
On the surface, Mare Nostrum with the Mythology expansion is extremely similar to Cyclades. They are both wargame and euro hybrids, both set in the Mediterranean and both concerning themselves with the gods and mythological creatures of that era. The similarities end there, however… the ways the games are treated make quite a difference (of course, I could list many games set in renaissance Italy about trading goods and managing resources too).
We had never actually played the mythlogy expansion, so even though I was aware the game might not work that well with three players, I WAS looking forward to giving the new stuff a test drive. The mythology expansion adds four main things to the game:
1) The Atlantis faction for a 6th player, along with an add-on board to accommodate it (not used in our game).
2) A new Role card, the Priest, and +/- 8 gods. The Priest adds a new step to each round where players can choose to make an offering to a single god that will give them a one time use power that round. The cost is a 3 card set.
3) New military units: Mythological creatures. Each faction has a specific mythological creature that can be purchased and placed on the board like any other military unit. It always rolls 6s in combat, and grants an additional ability depending on the creature. The cost is a 6 card set.
4) New heroes. There is a huge variety of heroes in this expansion. In fact, there are so many that I ignored them because it was too much reading to know what they all did.
I liked the mythological creatures. They are a simple addition that further differentiates the factions. I hope that the game doesn’t become too focused on them, but that’s just a worry… I have no specific reason to think they would.
I liked the Priest role and the associated gods as well, but as Kozure pointed out there is a very real possibility that they would grind the game to a halt. They have abilities like “destroy any City on the Board” , which seems quite powerful considering the effort that needs to be expended to do the same thing using the military route. Although it’s true that there is a god that exists solely to defend yourself against the other gods, it means spending a 3 card set every time and that would extend the game as well.
The session we played demonstrated why Mare Nostrum is not recommended with 3 players. Without the crowded board, it’s too easy for all three players to just keep exploring until one of them wins the game. Trading is wonky, too.
I was Carthage, Shemp was Greece and Kozure was Babylon. As we explored and grew our empires, it became clear that Shemp’s engine was winding up faster than ours. I purchased a behemoth and went after him just as he was about to win. Although he made my life difficult crossing the sea, I did get to Athens and took his richest province. Problem was, going after Shemp in this way simultaneously weakened me and therefore the victory was handed to Kozure (who had spread out to form a monstrously large empire in the meantime). Unfortunately, I don’t think this was an isolated incident… it’s just not meant to be played with three players.

Galaxy Trucker
We finished the evening with Galalxy Trucker. We tried the “Evil Machinations” expansion for the first time. The idea is that each player is dealt four cards at the start of the game. Each card is a particularly nasty/powerful event , and players must choose one to go into each event deck. In other words, each player knows about one of the bad things that is going to happen, and can therefore plan for it. I had been holding back on this one because it sounded particularly nasty, but having played it now… it seems easier than the Rough Road expansion.
One thing that happened: Shemp’s ship got hit by large cannon fire in such a way that the ship broke into three pieces!
Maybe next time, we’ll try with Rough Roads AND Evil Machinations… Galaxy Trucker is more fun when things go wrong anyway! This game has legs. Lots of fun.

Steamy Trucker, or Trucker McSteamy? (Galaxy Trucker, Steam, Excape)

a.k.a. The night Luch learns a new strategy: it's called "Strategy".

Galaxy Trucker (w/The Big Expansion)

We started out with Galaxy Trucker. In the past few games, I've found that the first flight has lacked some tension, so I decided to introduce a few elements from The Big Expansion in order to liven things up. We added the new tiles and the Rough Road Ahead cards (at difficulty level:1). After a brief explanation of the new rules, we were off.

In our first round, the Rough Roads Ahead card we drew was a brutal one called "Remorseless Fate". Among other things, whenever a Combat Zone or Sabotage is encountered it automatically affects all players except the one with the highest relevant stat. Sadly, no events of this sort occurred in the first round, so the card had no impact. Once again, very little occurred at all. It may have been even worse for the others because at least I was in first place and got to face the weak challenges along the way... the others just sat and watched. I will have to introduce evil machinations and/or the new ship classes next time, because now that we know what we are doing round 1 feels like wasted time.

In our second round, we drew the "piercing projectiles" RRA card. This one causes any meteors or blasts that blow off a piece of your ship to also take the next one behind it. Sounded very interesting, but once again very little actually happened in the second round, so the card didn't have any impact. The round was mostly notable because Shemp realized just as we were about to start flying that he had built the round 1 ship again! He was a little embarrassed that despite his mistake, he only finished building second...

Anyway, either we are getting better at this, or we had an unusually tame 2nd round. Once again, I'm thinking evil machinations next time.

In our third round, we drew "Metal Fatigue". This one has us roll a coordinate on the board every time we cross open space. If a piece exists at the coordinates rolled it is destroyed. Ouch. This flight was more like it. We flew through meteor shower after meteor shower. Then, we flew through more meteor showers. It was insane. My left wing broke off early. The front of my ship was smashed by a large meteor. My starter crew cabin was destroyed (was it metal fatigue?). I limped past the finish line with the back right hand quarter of my ship still in one piece. It was really fun.

Despite my big lead from rounds 1 and 2, my disastrous round three knocked me back. The final tally put Luch in front, me and Kozure tied for second and Shemp last.

The new tiles didn't add as much to the experience as I'd expected. Mostly, they serve as modifiers to other pieces so they end up making the ship construction a little bit trickier as it's much easier to fill up your ship and discover that vital items (such as cannons, storage, crew quarters or thrusters) are entirely missing. My favorite pieces were the reactor furnace and the statis chambers (the engine booster also seems quite interesting, but it didn't get used in our game). My least favorite additions were the armor plating and the luxury cabins since they seem to do very little in practice. I quite liked removing a random number of pieces at the start because it adds an element of the unknown tot he distribution and could create shortages of certain types of pieces that players need to deal with. The RRA cards are a great idea and I like that players can set a difficulty level and simply draw more than one to make each flight harder. Overall, I'm very glad I bought the expansion because Galaxy Trucker is a game that is only fun when it is challenging, and the base game does get easier with time.

Steam

After our last game on the germany map, I wanted to revisit the USA/Canada map with four players since it's the tighter of the two. When we first played it a few months ago, we each stayed in our respective corners as we learned the ropes of the game. Would it play the same way now that we know what we are doing?

I started right away in the same section as Kozure since he was the leader in our previous games and I was determined not to let him run away with it. The two of us spent the entire game battling over the south and east of the board. Meanwhile, Luch and Shemp were coexisting much more peacefully in the west. The force competition with Kozure led to some very tight and intertwined track, as well as some strong competition and tension over the while game. Unfortunately, since the folks in the west were keeping to themselves it was much easier for them to prosper. Shemp got all his ducks in a row and also benefited somewhat from a very well place link that netted him a fair number of points on other player's deliveries. He won the game, I came in a relatively close second, followed by Luch and then Kozure.

When the board is open enough, or when players are feeling peaceful, all players can coexist in the game and the winner is solely determined by the best forward planner. I guess the trick is to identify who is in the lead and build networks that hamper that player, while simultaneously advancing your own agenda. We'll have to pay more attention next time!

Excape

We played with the house rule that the leading player can't benefit from rolling doubles. It worked well as a variant, and I think we'll be playing with it from now on. I won the game, which is something I've never managed to do. I pulled ahead to a significant early lead but stayed close to the end for quite a while. Shemp eventually overtook me, but it was shortlived and I made it to the end first. Luch started out playing his usual style, rolling high and placing low in order to bump as many players he could (and not getting himself very far in the process). At a certain point, he switched gears and started playing to benefit himself as much as possible. When it started working, he said "so this is why you guys use strategy!".

Of course, he has often won at this game and yet in the game he discovers "strategy" he does poorly. Shows what we know.

Conclusions

Galaxy Trucker and Steam are two of my favorite games in a long while. Yes, Galaxy Trucker could use a tweak in the difficulty of the first round. Also, yes, I miss some of the tactility of Railroad Tycoon (taking shares, the plastic trains, etc). Regardless, they are excellent games that do what they set out to do very well. When I get around to putting together an updated top 10 list, I'm sure both of these would find themselves there somewhere.

Games that take long to set up (Galaxy Trucker, Agricola)

We had another "laissez-faire" dictator this week. Luch asked that we bring a few games, and he'd pick on site. From our bag of games, he picked Galaxy Trucker and Agricola.

Galaxy Trucker

Last time we played this, we discovered Luch had been building his ships without necessarily starting from the center. Bharmer hadn't played before, so a rules explanation was in order and we then started on our voyage of destruction.

The first flight was unusually destruction filled, but at least we all made it to the end. The same couldn't be said of the subsequent flights...

In flight two, the meteors where raining down amidst a variety of combat zones. I had a very successfully designed ships, so I managed to escape unscathed, but the others weren't so lucky. Bharmer lost most of his ship, but the most unfortunate story was that Kozure suffered an unlikely hit early which snowballed into a series of losses leaving him limping along. Luch had a ship that was loaded to the max with batteries, which we originally found very funny, but against all odds he suffered so many attacks that he burned through all of them and was destroyed. I ended the flight with a huge hoard of cash... a nearly insurmountable lead.

Flight three was similar, but Kozure had put together a very good ship and managed a huge comeback. I still did OK, but I wasn't sure if it would be enough. Bharmer and Luch? Well, they didn't do so well.

It wasn't. Kozure beat me by 2 dollars (it was something like 72$ to 70$ to 5$ to 2$).

As usual, it was a fun game. Even amidst total catastrophe, the experience is enjoyable... a very unique game indeed.

Agricola

Given Shemp's absence, it was a good time to play Agricola.

I always go for a huge family in a stone house, lots of animals and little farming, so I thought I'd try something different. I've read that gaining family members takes so many actions, and then feeding them takes actions again, that the perceived advantage of having them isn't as great as it seems.

We played with the K deck, and my starting hand had a number of cards that would work well together for a farming strategy. Chief among them was the swing back plow (I think) which allows me to plough three fields instead of one twice in the game. I spent the first part of the game getting a number of occupations and minor improvements out, then concentrated on getting corn and vegetables for my 6 fields. Production was up.

I also had the animal tamer, which allowed me to keep various animals in the house. Between that and the "family member without a room" action, I had a single room with two family members living with a cow.

I finished with a two room clay house and only three family members. Still, with lots of veggies, some sheep, lots of cards played and few open spaces I thought I had a shot at winning. It ended as a very close game, with only 5 points separating the four players. Kozure once again beat me by 2 points, but the margin was small enough that I'm thinking the "Few family members" strategy could probably work if played better.

I'm actually growing more fond of Agricola as time goes on. I enjoy the puzzle aspect, and have come to see the "denial of choice" interaction as a kind of randomizer for my personal game instead of a traditional multiplayer game. I find the process challenging but fun, and the cards do make each session feel different.

Something(s) old, Something new (Galaxy Trucker, Conspiracy x2, Through the Desert x2)

Galaxy Trucker

We played our second session of Galaxy Trucker this week. I can't explain why, but it wasn't my night for ship building. My first ship was actually decent, except for the complete lack of batteries. The third had almost no crew. On the flip side, the others were building very good ships for the most part (Kozure had an unfortunate first round due to a misunderstanding of the building rules...). Shemp managed to do much better than the last place finish he managed last time. In fact, he won!

Luch came to the realization that he has been building his ships wrong since the beginning. He was placing pieces anywhere on his board, rather than growing out from the initial cockpit piece! He HAS been doing quite well, finishing 2nd in both our games, if I'm not mistaken. Let's see if this rules clarification has an impact on his standings for game three...

Unfortunately, there were no spectacular ship destructions. For the most part, our ships survived mostly intact. The winner was determined by the player who could take advantage of the most abandoned space stations and survive the most slavers. Very few meteors, this time.

Galaxy Trucker has turned out to be a very fun game. It certainly has a novelty factor, but the puzzle-like ship building aspect is very enjoyable and the actual space flight is entertaining enough to work. I was really afraid the group would dislike it after our experience with Space Alert (a similar "gimmick" game by the same designer), but it looks like they like it. Shemp declared that it was "a million times better than Space Alert", so that's pretty good. Probably.

(I still like Space Alert, but I seem to be the only one. Galaxy Trucker is clearly the better game, however)

Conspiracy

It's been 3 1/2 years since we last played this game, which is in and of itself a game I've been dragging around with me for nearly 30 years. Something felt a little off as we played this time. The crossing and double crossing was rather limited, and the frequent "near wins" that characterized our earlier games didn't occur. Typically, the briefcase makes it to within one space of a number of players before anyone actually succeeds in bringing it home. This time, however, the briefcase easily came back to England (me) due to a tactical error on the other player's parts (Shemp though Kozure would stop me, Kozure thought Shemp would). In the second, Luch managed to put his money on the two characters that turned out to be pivotal and became impossible to stop.

I like the game, but it certainly seemed to lack something this time. Will it take another 4 years to see if it gets better or worse? We'll see.

Through the Desert

It's also been a while since we've played this one. Through the Desert is unfortunately not a very "sexy" game, in the sense that it doesn't jump out at you and compel you to play. It doesn't have a particularly compelling theme, it has no particularly clever mechanics, the bits aren't over the top. It definitely feels like it's from an earlier era, where games could be simpler and still get noticed.

Still, I'm really happy we got it to the table. I'm reminded of how much I enjoy playing it! The gameplay is so clean that all that is left is a very fast moving series of difficult decisions. I'm not sure that there is another game that epitomizes the "I have so many things I want to do, but so few actions to do them with" feeling as well as Through the Desert. I don't recall who won the games, but I had a great time playing.

You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought. (Galaxy Trucker, Cosmic Encounter)

I've recently purchased Galaxy Trucker and it's expansion, but I kind of did it despite my better instincts.

I have found two of Vlaada (Vladimír) Chvátil's latest games quite fascinating... Galaxy Trucker and Space Alert. Anyone who reads this blog knows that as much as I enjoy Space Alert, it fell quite flat amongst the rest of the group. Galaxy Trucker has a similar gimmicky vibe to it, and it doesn't have a whole lot of interaction, but I couldn't resist giving it a shot because to me it sounded... fun.

Galaxy Trucker

In Galaxy Trucker, each player must build a space ship out of a common pile of parts (laser cannons, boosters, crew cabins, shields, etc) onto a predetermined ship layout and fly it across the universe in a race to the finish (with extra money to be made if cargo can be delivered at the same time).

The way it works is that there is, literally, a pile of tiles face down on the table. One player yells "Go!" and everyone takes tiles, one at a time, and decides if they want to add it to their ship board. Once a player is happy with their ship, a timer is turned which limits the time left for the other players to finish building. Since everyone is drawing from the same pile, there is incentive to act fast to find the wanted pieces...

Because of the puzzle-like nature of getting all the connections right, and aggravated by the time pressure, the ships that are created are... less than ideal. Connectors stick out, gaps can be found, whole sections of the ship are held by one tiny connecting point. When the ship takes off to fly the dangerous expanse of space, bad things can happen. A deck of event cards is made up for for the trip, and every player must face the challenges one at a time. Space pirates, meteor showers and epidemics on board can have devastating effects on the cobbled together ships. On the bright side, players often have the opportunity to stop and pick up cargo they can sell later on, should they make it to the end.

It's silly, but fun.

In our first flight, my ship was actually fairly well constructed. Shemp made a placement error and had to lose a section of his ship. In the end, it didn't matter much because the flight consisted of open space and cargo pick-ups... I made a fair amount of money and was doing well. In our second flight, I once again had a pretty decent ship. I had a ton of cargo holds, and luckily our flight was again mostly uneventful. I took home a hoard of cash.

By now, Kozure, Luch and Shemp must have been thinking the game was not what I had made it out to be. In in over 20 event cards, we had a single meteor shower. The rest were all beneficial cards.

Ah, but then there was round three. I built out my ship completely, and it had a very good balance of guns, boosters and cargo holds. I was feeling confident that I could turn my lead into a win. Unfortunately, our flight was significantly rougher this time... and I had a lot of sections of my ship dependent on a single connection point. On the first card, I lost 1/4 of my ship to a space pirate attack. The second card was a meteor shower that took out another quarter. Then my shield went. Then everything went. About half way through, I retired from the race with my decimated ship left without a human crew to fly it.

Shemp made it nearly to the end, but ultimately blew up as well. Luch and Kozure made it to the end, and Luch was loaded with goods. When the score was counted, it he had 20x the score of last place Shemp (60+ to 3)!!!

Despite a number of surfae similarities (designer, art, gimmicky design, etc) Galaxy Trucker turned out to be well received by the group. We laughed a lot, and it proved entertaining and challenging. Even the event card phase, where up 16 cards need to be resolved in turn, occurs quickly enough AND has *just* enough decision making to keep things engaging. I'm very happy this experiment was a success.

Cosmic Encounter

This was our second evening playing Cosmic Encounter, though it was the first game for Luch. I was the Vaccuum, Shemp was the Pacifist, Kozure was the (I can't remember the name, but they retrieve used artifacts) and Luch was the Clone.

We played to 5 colonies this time, and the game played exactly in an hour, which was perfect.

There was a couple of memorable moments, such as the negotiations between Luch and Shemp that would have ended the game in a shared victory that were cancelled through Kozure's emotion control (which was, itself, sapped and counter-zapped). A second fun moment occured when I switched Luch and Shemp's races permanently.

The Vaccuum's power of sucking a number of other player's ships into the warp every time I lost some of mine proved to be quite powerful. The sucking noises I made everytime I exercised this power on other players proved to be quite satisfying.

I spent the last few rounds of the game trying to land a shared victory with ANYONE because my hand sucked so bad I knew I couldn't win otherwise. It almost worked with Kozure, but it came down to a tie that went to the defender, Shemp. Kozure spent much of the later rounds with only one ship on each of his colonies, which seems to be a situation that is hard to get out of.

In the end, Shemp managed to claw his way back from a 3 point deficit and get the win!

Again, I had a lot of fun. I like the feel of the game. Negotiation, backstabbing, chaos and fun. Not to be taken too seriously, but there is still lots of room to manipulate the outcome.