Five years, man. Also, five weeks.

All right, this is really rough, but at least a record of what got played in Early Fall 2012. Maybe I'll fill in a bit later, or someone else will in the comments.

This week I selected Traders of Genoa for our game, since, as I repeatedly stated, "It's been FIVE YEARS!"

Well, it wasn't five. It was four, so mea culpa on that. Still, a long time to go between plays.

PREVIOUSLY : Last week was 2 rounds of Smash-Ups, one w/ 3 players + 1 w/ 4. Also, Bios Megafauna.and For Sale!

PREVIOUSLIER : Game of Thrones Storm of Swords, yo. My wife thinks Storm of Swords is the nerdliest boardgame title possible. Feel free to suggest nerdlier possible titles in the comments.

EVEN PREVIOUSLIER : Roma, followed by Lord$ of Vega$, and I think a 3 of Vikings

PREVIOUSLIEST UNDER CONSIDERATION IN THIS ENTRY : Battlestar Galactica!

It's been a while. again. (Flashpoint, Die Bergen Von Burgund, Scrabble Slam, Vikings x2, Roma 2 x3)

Hmm, having a hard time keeping up with the blog these days.

A few weeks ago we played Flashpoint. It was good, and would probably work well as a family or non-gamer group game due to the compelling theme. Based on the one play, which we won handily, I don't see myself suggesting it for WAGS though. Very similar to Pandemic, though without the clever mechanism that compounds the threat of disease (the infected cities discard gets added back on top of the deck).

More Bergen Von Burgund, though this time we tried the advanced boards. Still enjoying it, though unlike the others in the group I think I prefer Macao slightly. The different boards were fun, though.

This week we were supposed to be 5 but in a weird twist of fate Bearbomb, Perra and Kozure couldn't make it at the last minute! 2 player games it was.

We played Vikings, and that was fun though there seemed to be far more available money with only 2 players. Wether tried the advanced variant (which we had never played before). It adds a new series of special function tiles that you get if you take the most expensive tile in the rondel. In,our first round, we went a little crazy buying the expensive tiles to get the power tiles. Unfortunately, for several rounds afterwards we were broke and had to take the free tile all the way around. We both salvaged our positions and were able to finish the game with respectable boards, though, and both enjoyed the advanced rules quite a bit (though we opted to skip the auction variant). One thing I will say, this is truly and advanced variant. It's not just more complicated or different, as is the case with most expert variants. It's actually harder strategically. The bonus tiles can be very powerful, but you can go broke doing it. We were surprised how much more thinking power was required!

Finished up with 3 sessions of Roma. I won the last one and that might be a first.

The King with Wings (Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena x2, Lords of Vegas, King of Tokyo x2)

Kozure, Shemp and I gathered this week to play an evening of Vegas games. It didn't work out due to a lack of available time, but what can you do.

Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena

As Kozure was in charge of his lads that evening, Shemp and I played two rounds of Roma. We pitted the two decks against each other to see how that went. We'll certainly have to play several more times to really know if one is stronger than the other, but it certainly seems to me that the original Roma is a swingier deck, with more opportunity to score big points when things work and potential to get none at all if things don't. Roma 2 seems smoother, with better odds of getting useful cards but a slower overall pace.

In our first game, I was getting creamed because I couldn't get any VP generation going. I was down to one vp if i'm not mistaken. Luckily, Shemp lost all ability to roll the dice he needed, consistently failing rolls that had a 5 in 6 chance of working. I didn't lose that last point and in fact landed two forums and started reaping the rewards. A few short rounds later I bounced back and won the game. I did realize one thing, though... Once the opponent is close to winning, getting VPs can be a bad move if it ends the game before you have more than the othe player. It was necessary to bleed out VPs from Shemp before claiming them. Tricky.

Our second game was more even, and I don't remember who won.

Still enjoying this two player game. Long live Herr Feld!

Lords of Vegas

With the kids in bed, we started our game of Lords of Vegas. As the game developed, a few patterns emerged...

1) I once again started growing a large casino in the big center-left block. I seem to do this every game.
2) Kozure once again received a disproportionate amount of disjointed properties.
3) I got into a war over a casino with Kozure. Normally, this happens between me and Shemp. Although in the end I managed to wrest control from Kozure and end the game with two decent casinos, the constant re-rolling of the casino dice drained both our money and made it hard to stay competitive with Shemp.

There wasn't a huge amount of trading this game. Not sure why... The opportunities seemed harder to find (though Shemp tried his best!).

Shemp won by quite a large margin. Kozure and I were in a tight race for second.

King of Tokyo

Tom Vassel and Michael Barnes have both recently talked up King of Tokyo and so when I saw it I thought i'd give it a try. It's a very simple and mostly silly game about competing monsters trying to destroy Tokyo and each other. Although there aren't a ton of games with this theme, it's also not really particularly original. What sets this game apart is the simplicity and focus of the design. You are either a creature in Tokyo, dealing damage to all the monsters outside of Tokyo OR you are a creature outside of Tokyo dealing damage to the monster currently in Tokyo. Since the monster inside Tokyo cannot heal, it creates a natural cycle of monsters entering Tokyo, trying to stay as long as possible, and then leaving to lick it's wounds. The game is won by either accumulating 20vps or being last monster standing. It's a dice rolling game where you can either roll wounds, healing, VPs or victory points. Each player rolls three times, hoping to get dice in the combination they are trying to achieve, yada, yada, yada. A deck of cards representing upgrades spices things up as players can save up energy to purchase them and slowly transform their creature from, for example, a simple giant dinosaur to A GIANT DINOSAUR WITH TWO HEADS, WINGS AND ALIEN METABOLISM!!!. It's easy to teach, it's short and a lot of fun to play. Big thumbs up from me and easily the best boardgames Richard Garfield has done since Robo-rally.

In our first session, Shemp dominated Tokyo for nearly the whole game because he managed to snag the "wings" upgrade early, which allowed him to spend energy to ignore damage. I think Kozure won the second game, but I'm not sure.

Bilkis' sacks of sand (Roma 2: Arena, Macao, 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion x2)

Roma 2: Arena

When I purchased Roma, I actually thought I was purchasing Roma 2: Arena. I remembered reading that one had text instead of icons, and that the same one had more paths to victory, but I didn't know which was which. When I saw Roma at j&j cards in Waterloo, I looked at the back and saw that the cards were text based, not icons, and purchased it. Unfortunately, the picture on the back of the box is of the German version, which uses text, but the north American version of Roma 1 uses icons. I purchased the wrong one. Anyway, figuring it couldn't matter that much, I opened it and we played it anyway. As it turns out, me and Shemp liked it quite a bit. Sure, many games are lopsided and the only likely path to victory is having Forums, but it was quick and enjoyable. Shemp decided to purchase Roma 2, figuring that at the very least we could try the variant where the decks from both games are pitted against each other. This week, we got a chance to fruit out (the base game, not pitting the decks against each other). It's good. There are definitely more paths to victory, and the game seems less fragile (less games will end because they couldn't get their engine going before they went broke), but the tradeoff seems to be a significantly longer game. I'd say I did like it better than Roma 1, but not by a wide margin.

Shemp won the game by emptying the vp pile, scoring one "phantom point" (I.e. The vp pile was exhausted, but the bank owed him one more vp). The phantom point broke the tie, making the game 19 to 18. Well played.

Macao

I was in the mood to play Macao again, just to see if Shemp's streak is truly over. In short, it is. The game was very close, between me and Kozure, though. A miscalculation left Shemp 1 cube short of scoring big,leaving him behind. Between me andKozure, it came down to the bonus end game points, and I had more.

About 4 rounds in, I activated the artisan. This card allows you to activate one card per turn without spending the cubes (as long as you have the necessary cubes in your supply). Between that card and the various mistressesthatgaveme a free cube in their co our every turn, I was flush with goods cubes. I either played very poorly or Kozure played extremely well, because I should have killed the other two with that combo so early in the game.

7 Wonders: Leaders expansion

We capped of the evening with 2 sessions of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. It's a simple expansion that introduces a new deck of cards representing famous leaders throughout history. There is a pre game draft to deal each player 4 leader cards and before each age players choose which leader, if any, players want to pay to put in play.

The end result is not terribly different from the base game. The leaders allow a little more long term strategy, which is nice, that's pretty much it. Shemp commented that the downside to having these leaders is that it predetermines a strategy for you and reduces the interaction as players concentrate on their cards instead of blocking opponents.

The art continues to be very nice, and the game remains a very fun and fluid despite the additions. I'll probably keep playing with the addition in future sessions but I'm sure I won't really miss it if I play someone else's copy.

I won the first game using a combination military and science victory (as Rome, led by Ceasar, the guy from 300 and Alexandre the Great). Kozure won the second with a more focussed military strategy that apparently also involved burying all the brick in order to prevent others from building.