Chris, Steph, Michael, Jeff, and I played a great game of Galaxy Trucker with all the expansions. It was Steph’s first time with the last expansion, and Michael’s first time playing in general. Michael got hopelessly lost and didn’t understand many of the special pieces. I got some really bad penalties, but was able to overcome them in the second round. The first round and the third round weren’t too good for me. I couldn’t handle the pirates or the invaders in the third round, which made me all too vulnerable. In the same pirate attack, Michael, Jeff, and I were taken out due to lack of people to fly the ship. By that point I had already lost most everything. I was using the flotilla, and it actually ended up being two separate ships. I was a little surprised at that, but I suppose it has to happen every now and then. Chris ended up winning by a lot, and Steph got a solid second. I was well in third, but it wasn’t too bad, that was wholly due to dying in the third round.
Iliya and I sat down to try a game of Civ V against a good number of computers. I chose the nation of Polynesia, since I hadn’t played them before. They are able to embark and go in the open ocean from the start. I was able to use this to explore a ton before most others were able to. I got ahead on science and then got ahead on religion. The religion part started making me lots of money, which was very nice. We had to stop eventually, and we’ll finish the game some other time.
This was a fun game, with Dan, Adam, Tina, and myself. I ended up winning, but by a very narrow margin. I was Russian, and that made it easy for me to steal techs. Since I was able to steal techs I got ahead, and people didn’t question me getting my armies close to other peoples cities, since that is how I could steal. The end of the game came about when I dropped everything and got military bonuses. This game me a total of +16 on the attach, and Dan didn’t have much in the way of defenses. I was very close to a tech victory as well. It was a fun and well played game of Civ.
While I really like this game, it goes way too slow if people are trying to optimize, they are new, and there are five people playing. This is what happened on Thursday making a game that should have taken 1.5 hours take 3.5 hours. We didn’t get to sleep nearly early enough, and it made the game not as enjoyable when there was 20 minutes between your turns. I think a more synchronous style gameplay is needed for this game to work. That or faster players.
We drove over to Rileys and met up with Jeremy there. Wit and his gf stopped by, but didn’t stay for the festivities. We watched Startrek: Into Darkness and played with the expansion of FTL. I did pretty well, getting to the final boss on hard mode. My strategy of choice in the expansion was area control boarding with the crystal ship style b. It was very powerful, except if running into an automated ship early on. Luckily the failures made for some early deaths, so I didn’t have to deal with terribly annoying deaths mid game. I made it to one jump away from the final boss, but the regular ships in the last stand were able to take me down on hard mode. I should have used the cloak more often, but it kept slipping my mind.
Adam, Dan, and Andrew came over to Beachhead to play New Era with Steph and I. I got a really good start, and was able to get a lot of point producing buildings out. The best part was that most of the point buildings were action based, and didn’t actually require I spend resources and men to get the points. I got a massive score for the game, 46, when only 33 is required to win. Adam did really well also with a score of 41.
San Juan was a good game, I tried to get some good point engines going without a card engine, but it didn’t turn out. Steph did the card engine and ended up winning with it. I wasn’t able to build nearly enough. Michael and Bill were fun to play with.
We also played Kingdom Builder. This was fun, and I was able to be very mobile with the bonuses. That kept me moving around and getting the castles, but I spread out too much and missed out on some important bonuses.
Adam, Kevin, Andrew, and I played a day of MTG where we took about 15 packs worth each and made a sealed deck with them. I was able to get a decent control deck going, but didn’t have any way to finish it. There were a few big hitters, but they weren’t enough typically to do the trick. I played a black, blue, and then added some green when I played against Andrew. Andrew took the day like he normally does. I didn’t have as good a showing as I typically do. I look forward to next time when we can do a rare and epic draft. It will be a decent bit harder since there will be many more multicolored, and the mana curve will be very different.
Steph and I went to Nima and Caryn’s party and it was pretty good. We played a round of pool and a round of Hanabi, which we didn’t do so great on. Nima cooked some fish and served some cake and ice cream. We then went back up to their apartment after the pool house was closed down. We played a good number of rounds of Cards Against Humanity. I did really well and we learned a good bit about the different cards.
It's an Exciting World 