Teaching Games on a Friday Night
I taught some friends four new games last night: - Metro - placing tiles to build the Paris subway system.
- Category 5 (a.k.a. 6 Nimmt) - Hurricane-themed card game with simultaneous play. Just don't play the 6th card on a pile.
- Whoonu - all about guessing people's favorite things.
- TransAmerica - an easy game to learn about building railroads across the United States.
Stats as of May 26th:
- Individual Game Sessions: 13
- New Titles Played: 3
- Days elapsed / remaining: 26 / 219
Colonial Economics and Ancient Auctions
It was another Thursday night at Todd's house with lots of people, and we played two great games. - San Juan - the card game spin-off of Puerto Rico. It plays a bit differently with four than three, which is the number I usually play with. It was tightly contested, with Todd managing to build an early lead in buildings. In the end, Todd won on the tie-breaker, almost upset by M's massive chapel accumulation. I finished 4 points behind the leaders. I like this game; it's already in my collection.
- RA - a complex auction game set in ancient Egypt. This game can definitely burn up your brain if you let it. I hadn't played in over a year; so I stumbled through this one, not particularly confident in any of my decisions. I must have done something right, because I won this one, on the tie-breaker. What are the odds of that, two games, both decided by the tie-breakers in one night? I'm glad RJ brought this one, because now that I remember just how cool RA is, I'm going to get my very own copy.
Stats as of May 25th:
- Individual Game Sessions: 9
- New Titles Played: 3
- Days elapsed / remaining: 25 / 220
Dragons and Treasures and Artifacts, Oh My!
Thursday night at Todd's house, we played Aladdin's Dragons with five people. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. The game involves lots of blind bidding, which is not necessarily my favorite mechanic. Fortunately, the group played at a good pace with little analysis paralysis. I finished in the middle of the pack with an even par score of 6 artifacts.
We played with the simple non-magic rules. I think adding in the magic rules would slow the game down signficantly, because there would be much more for the players to think about, more decisions to be considered. I might try it sometime, just to see.
Stats as of May 18th:
- Individual Game Sessions: 7
- New Titles Played: 3
- Days elapsed / remaining: 18 / 227
The Story So Far . . .
Here's a summary of my game activities since May 1st.
May 4th - Todd's House -
- Medici - A card-flipping auction game. It was close but I did manage to win this one. I recommend giving it a try.
- Twitch (new) - A fast card game, a bit like a card-slapping game without actual slapping.
May 6th - Ursuppe (new) and San Juan with DL and EM. - Ursuppe (aka Primordial Soup) (new) - Gangs of amoebas struggling for total soup domination via genetic advancement and sheer force of numbers. It was everyone's first time to play, and I lost badly.
- San Juan - Card based spin-off of Puerto Rico. I won this time. Thank you, Guild Hall.
May 11th, Lunchtime - Whoonu with co-workers - A simple game about trying to figure out what other people's favorite things are. The important thing is that there was much laughter and a good time was had by all.
May 11th, Todd's House - Played Attika (new) with Todd and MW, which is to say that Todd taught us how to play by beating us soundly. It's a complicated "stone-placing" game, and I'm sure I haven't a clue about just how complex it is, yet. Must try it again sometime.
Stats as of May 14th:
- Individual Game Sessions: 6
- New Titles Played: 3
- Days elapsed / remaining: 14 / 221
Hello, World
This foray into the world of blogging was inspired by my friend Todd, and his blog Board Game Madness. Like Todd, I'll be keeping a record of individual game sessions played over the course of the year, and possibly new titles played as well. I'll start my count for this year as of May 1st, which is about as far back as I can reliably recall all my gaming activites. This gives me 245 potential days of gaming for 2006. We'll see if I can manage to play more games per day than Todd, but let's not think of this as a competition. Let's just consider it an experiment.
