It's an Exciting World

Last night I went to Box for board games night there.  Nick, Peter, Brian, and myself played Timelines, a game of time travel to exploit markets.  I got a pretty good handle of end game conditions from the get go, but with the way the game was played there was no way to know what you would be able to do next turn.  Anyone could completely throw off your ability to do something, which would then make you waste more turns trying to get back to a state where you could do it, just to be foiled again.  If people were only trying to do what was best for themselves then this wouldn’t be a big issue, but it was so easy to block someone that you couldn’t finish the game.  It was especially true when there was one clear leader, which is the position I got into early on since I chose the specializing strategy, which paid off well in this game.  I still ended up winning by a large margin.

BGG Link Timelines

We also played Avalon last night, which was a good bit of fun.  We had up to 9 players in one game, and we also included many of the special characters.  I got to be a special character most of the time, which was really nice.  I won most of the games I was a part of, but in Avalon it is hard to make sure anything specific happens.  I did lose when I was Merlin, which was disheartening.  The guy playing Percival didn’t know what to do, so he didn’t back me up when I pointed out the bad guys I knew.  A suspicious play by Candice also made me think that she was Mordred when it was actually Adam.  All in all it is a well balanced game with a good bit of manipulation.

BGG Avalon

I introduced Nima to the worker placement genre with Stone Age last night.  I used Nick’s strategy of getting a large population and never feeding them.  This works out if you continually get points, and I was able to get 12 huts.  I was able to get a score of 187 and Tina had a score of 178.  Jeff didn’t do too well as he didn’t choose a strategy.  Tina was using the card and agg strategy.  Nima had fun, but didn’t know enough about what he was doing to get a good score.  He did copy us decently well, so that his score wasn’t bad.

BGG Link

Brian, Tina, and I played some Suburbia, and it was the craziest game of it I’ve played so far.  We got off to an odd start, with me making an industrial loop off the bottom.  Brain went for a concentrated business district and was doing really well with it.  Tina got into the Mints and Community Parks.  I ended up getting a power plant and taking off in income, Brian did the same with his business district.  Brian then got a PR firm and doubled it to get a feedback loop of passing lines to increase reputation.  I got a Stadium and put many greens around it, then put it in the recycling plant into the center of my industrial loop.  Those two combined for a super powerful combination of income and reputation, and I was able to keep almost maxed out on both.  Brian lost traction on the income as his doubled PR firm really went insane.  He was ahead by a lot before taking the bonuses into account, but I took all the bonuses and got a total score of 139, the highest score I’ve seen so far.

BGG Link

Tina and Mark played Race for the Galaxy with me, and as expected Tina won with me in a distant second.  She is quite the veteran and the only way I could expect to beat her at it is to have a really lucky draw.  She ended with a moderate score of 69, but since I was playing a rushed military strategy that wasn’t too strange.  I ended up with 44 points and Mark had 39.  I also had 2 prestige coming from every produce, which essentially put a block on her produce, so she went alien for the win.

BGG LInk

I played factory fun with Tina, Jeff, Mark, and another guy I don’t really know.  Mark I don’t know well either; he is one of the guys from the Stanford board games group.  The game went really well for me and I got a score of 102, the highest I’ve made.  The score board only goes up to 105, so I feel really good about the score.  The guy I didn’t know decided to give up after he couldn’t place a machine and lost track of where he started before that turn.  I did the same on my first play through of the game.

BGG Link

This was a really good game, but it was a little too complicated and we didn’t interact much.  The game could have been different if we fought each other, and I had considered attacking Tina to stall the game.  We all went the merchant route and Tina beat me, with Jeff in 3rd.

BGG Link

I played the Volkare’s Quest campaign of Mage Knight and I played the crystal making dragon character.  I was playing with Brian and Tina.

Brian got a really good early start to the game when he ran across a ruin that required one of each basic mana, and he was able to do it then keep going attacking the mage tower he was planning on attacking anyway.  There were a few points where we did things wrong, but we will keep those in mind next time and work it out.  The campaign took us from about a 2:30 start to a 10 pm finish.  All in all that is a moderate time scale for Mage Knight as it can easily take much much longer.

Towards the end we got a good formation going around Volkare, and we had the cards set up so that we were just waiting for him to make a move.  When he did I was able to take out all 14 green enemies, and then Brian and Tina split the 8 red and white.  I had the perfect setup for taking down the little guys as I had 2 spells; the first removed the first wound from any attack to me, the second reduced the armor of all enemies I was fighting.  I also had 2 units that could do 6 ranged fire damage each, and I also got 6 siege damage in there as well.

This round started out well for me as I got the monopoly card early and also got the perfect spot to use it. I kept the lead the entire game and barely won it in the end. I played with Brian, Jack, Derick, Steph, and Angel.

Although I had not previously blogged about settlers I have played it a good number of times before. This game was between Jack, Stephanie, Brian, Derick, and myself. I did not get good rolls as I put my bets on the same numbers. Stephanie got a big lead and kept it for the win. I was trying to get Derick to build one more road to block stephanie from winning but he didn’t understand and passed the turn to her. She got the longest road to take the game. I was tied for second but had the best chance to catch up.