Shemp played himself so hard he's bleeding (Jumpgate, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm)

We played a second session of Kozure's prototype, Jumpgate. This was was the first time Shemp and Bharmer had tried it, and I think it was the first playtest with the full complement of 4 players. I was initially worried that there would be too much chaos with 4... many games where the board changes significantly between turns suffer a little bit in my opinion. There's often a feeling of lost control that I find unsatisfying. Luckily, it didn't really feel that way. Again, I'm not going to talk about it too much but it was fun playing it again.

One note: For posterity, I want to record that during this game Bharmer managed to "Bharmer", "Luch" and perform a "quarter Ono". It was quite remarkable.

We finished the evening with our second game of Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm.

I was dealt an excellent hand. My starting world was the Separatist Colony. In my hand were 3 alien cards that had a military bent, and a fourth card that boosted military. They complemented each other so well I was able to put down military/ alien worlds and developments effortlessly, grabbing a "first to have 3 alien cards" chit along the way. I only had a single production world, the damaged Alien Factory, but between it and another card I had played it gave me 6 cards a shot. I spent the second half of the game putting down military worlds for free and 6VP developments. I don't normally do well at Race, but this one was playing itself. I ended the game 20 points ahead of the second place player, Kozure. Yay me!

Hyperspace, baby! Yeah! (Jumpgate)

We were down to three this week (of note, Shemp couldn't attend because of an "explosion of insanity" at his place).

This will be very short, due to the fact that we only played a couple of rounds of a game Kozure has designed for a local contest. I'm not sure to what point the details are under NDA.

I WILL say it's called Jumpgate, and that it's a good game. Kozure has remarkable talent for designing games of this type, and always surprises with components that are better than homebrew prototypes should have.

Here's hoping our constructive criticism wasn't too hard on him, and that the game is a success in the competition!