It's an Exciting World

Also at Brian’s we played New Era.  Stephanie left for her horseback riding lesson, but Adam, Andrew, and Brian stayed to play.  The game was quite interesting.  It took elements of worker placement, resource management, tableau building, engine building, and drafting.  The game was a lot of fun, but really hard to grasp fully in the first play through.  I got last in this game as well, but was doing well until the final turn.  The part of the game that I didn’t quite get was how the point engines you make mid-game don’t survive until the end of the game.  Anything making points can only do it 3 times before it stops, meaning that you will constantly have to look for other ways to get the points you needed.  The other players will also be attacking your buildings so planning too far in advance will leave you vulnerable.  The ability to interact with other players tableaus is what brought the game together, and made it a multiplayer game.  The only other interaction is the drafting, but that wouldn’t make it much of a board game.  That being said factory fun is a great game and the only player interaction in that game is the drafting.  I really enjoyed the game, despite my engine falling apart towards the end.

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We played a good game of Fish Cook at Brian’s place for an EGD.  The game was going well and I thought I was taking the lead, but other players were making many more recipes, and the fish they were using were much cheaper.  That lead to the differential being more for them even though my recipes were worth more.  I ended up in last place on that game, but still had fun doing it.

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Nick and I played a round of Innovation the base game.  I got an early lead, but Nick quickly caught up.  He was 1 achievement away from winning, but I was able to super tech up and stop him from his last one.  Then I was able to use the super tech to score a ton of points and take the game.  It was really close the entire time and a little bit of a change would have made the difference in the game.

BGG Link

This was a really good game, but it was both longer and shorter than I would have liked.  The number of rounds was a little few, since the engine building didn’t really get the chance to take off.  I always feel that in any engine building game you need the game to end just before the engines get out of control.  It may have been our inexperience with the game, but we weren’t even close to having the game get out of control.  I had a great time doing it though.  I think the game would be better with fewer options per round and more rounds.

I played it twice.  The first was Adam, Steph, and Brian playing with me.  Steph did not join in the second game.  I got second to Adam in both situations, as he was able to exploit two really well developed strategies.  I was very close to winning the second game, but Brian blocked one of my big point tiles by 1 meople.

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I played a round of Race last night with Adam and Steph.  I chose very poorly on strategy, and also wasn’t able to get anything going with only developments in hand.  Steph and Adam were both going strong military.  Steph really ran away with it at the end, despite Adam an I having prestige.  I enjoyed it despite losing terribly.

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This game was ok, but not terribly fun.  There was a decent amount of strategy to it, but the mechanics were really slow to develop and the game was quick to finish.  Since there were so many people going between your turns there was very little control of the board, but at the same time a single piece might not move from the spot it was in before for several rounds of the table.  I know a good number of things I’d do differently if I were to play again, but I don’t really want to.  This was a roll and move, plus strategy; which didn’t do it for me.

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I really like this game.  It was a market heavy day, but the market simulation in Fish Cook was really enjoyable.  The game went really well for me, even though I had 2 of my recipes stolen.  The workings of the game are really cool, and I wouldn’t mind playing something with that kind of market simulation for a bit longer.  The mitigated randomness was really nicely done.

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We played another round of Glory to Rome today, and I really ran away with it.  It was to the point that we didn’t even bother counting the points at the end of the game and everyone but Tina gave up about half way through.  Everyone was a pretty good sport about it, and Steph did a move that would just end the game more quickly.  Tina was about to be able to steal one of my buildings but I already had too much synergy going for it to matter significantly.  I really like this game and how all the mechanics work well together.  I also like that the game loop is spelled out on the game cards directly.  It makes such a complex game much easier to understand and play.

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This game was rather simple, but annoying to play.  The game started with 30 gears (currency) per person with the one who got the most currency by the end of the game winning.  The game ended with little more than 40 currency as the winner, and some people had lost money along the way.  The mechanic of manipulating the market price was frustrating when playing with 4 people.  The boosts weren’t very powerful, and usually caused more frustration.  I won the first game with 44 points and Steph won the second with 36 points.  Nick and Tina played along with us, and none of us enjoyed the game.  The theme didn’t have much to do with the game, since it was a pure market simulation.  There was nothing to do with Mars and little to do with Mechanics.  The art was steam punk, but nothing beyond that was.

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