It's an Exciting World

The last game of the night was Tzolk’in.  Tina, Adam, Nick, and I played this one.  We didn’t have anyone going for skulls, and I did the food strategy again with the bonus of the food tile monument being out.  I got 11 of the food tiles, but that wasn’t quite enough to make up for the other ways I destroyed myself to get it.  I should have waited a few more turns to take it, but such is life.  I ended up getting a close third.  I think the next game I play is going to be the resource strategy instead of the food strategy.  It technically has a bigger payout, but it is also harder to play since food is the way you place units.  I’ll probably trade a bunch to get the food I need instead of hoping for the food track to have something for me.  With many people seeing how I can control the board with the food strategy I expect a few more to go after it in the future.  I also don’t think getting as many people as I did was useful in the end.  I should have gotten other things instead.

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The second game of the night was Suburbia.  It was a good game, but I didn’t get my engine to take off.  I was going for a yellow ring strategy and the buildings I needed never came out.  I was able to get a good thing going with some other buildings, but nothing that really took off.  If we had gone a few more turns I would have been completely ruined.  Tina beat me, and Adam came in last.  He didn’t get anything really going strongly either, and didn’t get many bonus points on top of that.

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Last night for games night I played a good number of games.  The first of which was Small World with Chris, Julian, Jeff, and Bri.  I was able to take the lead and keep it with the strategy of going for the mountains before declining.  No one tends to attack the mountains with a declined race on them.  I also came into the board right next to my declined race, so that there was only one side they would really be attacked from.  It was a good game and we played with all the expansions.  I started out with a bad race of historian elves.  I declined that immediately and moved on to rampaging amazons.  The amazons did really well, and the elves stayed on the board for a while.  I then got the flying pixies, which was fantastic for taking over a ton of area.  I won by a fair margin, and was able to knock down my closest competitors with the rampaging amazons.

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I had Andrew and Brian over to play New Era tonight.  It was a really close, really high scoring game.  I didn’t get much in the beginning, as I couldn’t incorporate anything.  The first turn I had 0 points.  I was able to catch up and got a good engine around cooperating and gas.  I still lost, but it was 43 me, 44 Andrew, and 46 Adam.  I might have to play it again this Thursday at games night.  The only thing that would trump it is if one of Steve’s games hits the table.

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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.

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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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