San Juan Sunday

Gillian and I pulled out San Juan by Rio Grande for a Sunday-night game. San Juan (published in 2004) is a card adaptation of another Rio Grande game, Puerto Rico, which was published in 2002 and is the top-ranked game at BoardGameGeek. I bought San Juan in February 2007 (at Amazon, for $28.60). Gillian and I were taking a cruise in March, and I wanted to get a quick, easy and portable game that we could play in the airport, on the plane and/or on the ship.

The game is all of those things and is often recommended as a "girlfriend" game -- having a minimal amount of conflict. In fact it's sometimes criticized as being multiplayer solitaire. Unfortunately, while that makes it a good girlfriend game (and Gillian considers it one of her favorites), I find it a little boring. We've only played it about a half dozen times since the cruise (mostly with just the two of us, but once with Al and Linda). This was the first time we'd played it since last August.

The rules are online, for anyone who wants to check it out. There's also a free online Java version that allows you to play against up to three AI (computer) opponents.

Certain card combinations can generate big victory points in San Juan, and one of my favorites is to combine the Smithy, that reduces the building cost of production buildings, with the Guild Hall, that gives extra victory points for each production building. That's the combo that I was able to build tonight, giving me 12 bonus points and a total of 34. Gillian's favorite strategy is to build the Chapel, which can also produce a number of bonus points. She wasn't able to get it built in time, however, so she finished with 25 points.

Long(er) Shot

We gave Z-Man Game's Long Shot another try Friday night. In addition to the boys and Teresa, Gillian was back home, and Dennis made a surprise appearance.

Dennis won with $270. He bought the winning horse, bet $20 on it and held onto a pile of cash. Andrew was a close second (with $240), followed by Teresa ($175), Gillian ($160) and Patrick ($130). Mom and Non decided to sit out, and I was the banker.

The boys and Tersa still enjoy it, and Dennis seemed to have a good time too. Gillian said that it was "cute." I haven't actually played it since the first go-around, but I can see why it's popular as a party game. It's easy to learn and fairly quick-moving.

Second Dominion

Patrick requested that we play Dominion again today, so we played a two-player game. Patrick won 33-21.

Dominion is a deck-building game -- players start with ten cards that are mostly treasure cards. The treasure cards can be played to purchase more treasure cards, victory point cards and action cards. Action cards allow players to draw extra cards, spend extra money or "attack" the other players. To add to the game's replayability, the selection of available action cards is determined randomly each game.

The game moves quickly and has a good amount of replayability. I can see why it's popular. My only criticism is that the theme is mostly meaningless.

First Try of Dominion

Patrick wanted to try out Dominion this afternoon. I had ordered it on May 4th when Amazon put it on sale for $36.68. The game was published by Rio Grande Games in 2008 and has already become extremely popular -- boasting three full expansions with another on the way.

The rules are fairly simple, and, once again, Mya's excellent (and funny) Playmobile Legions Review at BoardGameGeek is better than anything I could supply. The game is a little similar to another Rio Grande game that Gillian likes, San Juan. I think San Juan is OK, but I don't really enjoy it that much -- especially with just two people. I'm hoping that Gillian will like Dominion.

I won today's game with 39 points. Andrew finished second with 33, and Patrick had 32. All of us had a good time, and both boys want to play it again.

Descent: Into the Dark

Al and Steven came over last night for a full four-heroes game of Descent. Al took Byrah the Falconer, Steven took Grey Ker, Andrew took Landrec the Wise, Patrick took Mordrog, and I played the Overlord. They took on the first quest -- Into the Dark -- plowing through the dungeon without much trouble. Andrew's hero (who has very powerful magic attacks, but was short on armor) died once, and Patrick barely survived being surrounded once by beastmen and skeletons. But the group came through just fine -- killing the master giant at the end of the quest without much danger.

The consensus on BoardGameGeek is that the heroes should win most of the quests in the basic set. And that's fine with me, as I view Descent more as a cooperative roleplaying game than a test of wits. I also understand why the rules have the heroes lose all of their weapons and armor between quests. The heroes were so powerful by the end of the quest that they were killing a roomful of five monsters before the monsters knew what hit them.

We hope to continue playing throughout the summer, and Patrick plans to paint the figures once school lets out.

Second Try at Long Shot

Long Shot got its second test tonight -- the first time with the Friday night crowd of Andrew, Patrick, Mom, Non and Teresa. Patrick ended up winning with $280, followed by Mom ($200), Teresa ($185), Non ($165) and Andrew ($75). (I was the banker.)

The reviews were generally positive. Teresa and Mom both said that it took awhile to get used to the idea of playing cards that helped a horse that you've bet on -- even if you don't own the horse. We'll probably give it another try next Friday.

Give Me Liberty

Al came over last night to celebrate my birthday with a little wargaming. He brought along Liberty by Columbia Games, and we were able to play the first three turns/years.

Liberty was published in 2003, and simulates the American War of Independence. It's in Columbia's block series -- a collection of wargames that use wooden blocks rather than counters. The blocks are set on-end, so that players can't see the strength of opposing units until the battle begins. Similar games from Columbia include Hammer of the Scots (Wars of Scottish Independence), Richard III (The Wars of the Roses), Crusader Rex (The 3rd Crusade), Pacific Victory (WWII Pacific Theater) and others. The games are known for being quick-moving, and Columbia makes an effort to keep the rulebooks at eight pages (which is remarkably short for a wargame). (The latest episode of the wargame podcast The Noise Before Defeat summarizes the history of block games.)

Al and I had played Richard III last fall, so we were able to jump into the rules fairly quickly. As is our tradition when playing Revolutionary War games, I took the British and Al took the Americans. (I'll save the details for a future posting, but, over the years, our group has fallen into a routine for most historical board games -- with each of us taking the same country for a given time period regardless of the game.) I managed to take Charleston (South Carolina) in 1775 without much of a fight as both sides spent most of the year supplying. In 1776 I was able to take Fort Ticonderoga and repulse a large assault on Boston by Washington. In 1777, Washington was able to take Boston and then retake Fort Ticonderoga. The British army retreating from Boston was able to link up with reinforcements to take Philadelphia and then move on to New York. Meanwhile smaller British forces in the South were able to take Wilmington and Savannah. At this point we decided to call it a night. The British were in good shape in the South and Mid-Atlantic, but most of Canada was wide-open for an American assault. Furthermore, the French were getting ready to arrive (supply your own joke), so things were likely to start becomming more difficult.

Since I enjoyed Richard III and Crusader Rex, I wasn't surprised that Liberty was good. My current plan is to put together a posting on Independence Day summarizing the various Revolutionary War games that I've played. For now, I'd say that Liberty is one of the two that I'd recommend. As far as the game's mechanics, I'd say that it's not all that different than the other block games. Any wargamer who hasn't yet tried out a block game should definitely pick one up. I think that they're all fairly similar, so I'd recommend choosing the one with your prefered time period. I normally wouldn't recommend Liberty (or any of the block games) to non-wargamers. However, the March 1, 2010 episode of the gaming podcast The Spiel recommends three wargames that non-wargamers should try -- including Hammer of the Scots. Any non-wargamer considering this advice could probably substitute Liberty -- especially if they find the time period more familiar or interesting.

Al and I hope to play it again soon. Unfortunately, there are about 25 games in that category. I don't think this one would work very well with Cyberboard, so PBeM isn't really an option. There is an online version of Hammer of the Scots, so maybe we can give that a try.

Long Shot

The boys and I had a chance to try out Z-Man Games' Long Shot this afternoon. I ordered it back on May 6th (from Amazon, for $39.95). Long Shot was listed on several folks' top-10 lists for 2009. It's highly rated as a party game.

The game is built around a horserace theme. Players roll dice on their turn to determine which horses move (and how far). Players also draw and play cards that can cause horses to move forward or back on the track. But Long Shot is far more than a roll-and-move game. The object of the game is to have the most money when the race ends. Players start with $25 and can use the money to buy horses or bet on horses (regardless of who owns them). The buying and betting occurs throughout the race, so as a horse's track position changes, it affects the betting and the players' decisions regarding card play. At the end of race, the owners of the top-three horses earn $100, $75 and $50 (respectively) and the horses pay off to the players who placed bets on them.

Andrew won our game with $425. I finished second with $365, and Patrick had $245. All three of us enjoyed the game, and I think it will be even better with more people.

The game represents my latest effort to find a "Friday night" game. The problem is that no one is in the mood for anything complicated on Friday night. Plus, Teresa and Gillian dislike games with even a moderate "take that" element (such as Uno and Killer Bunnies). Farkle was working well, but I was getting a little burned out. While there is a good amount of interaction in Long Shot, there isn't much negative interaction. Also, Teresa likes horse racing, so I'm hoping the theme will appeal to her.

Descending Farther

Patrick and I were alone for gaming Friday night, and he wanted to give Descent another try. We had decided that we weren't familiar enough with the rules to have him control two heroes, so he only took one. The game's rules scale the strength of the monsters (and the Overlord's available cards) to the number of heroes, so in theory being the only hero shouldn't prevent you from winning. As it turned out, though, Patrick gave up before leaving the dungeon's second room.

The problem was that I was able to spawn monsters as fast as Patrick could kill them. In retrospect, I think that Patrick probably should have ignored the "speed bump" monsters and should have kept moving (literally) towards the "boss" monster. The rules are set up so that the heroes automatically win when they kill the boss monster -- thus Patrick was really just distracting himself from the real goal.

I've got to find a storage solution for this game. As is typical for a Fantasy Flight production, it has dozens of tokens and plastic minis. (The photo above, posted to BoardGameGeek by Johannes Albani, gives you some idea of the number of pieces.) The game frequently slowed down while I searched for a particular figure or token.

Patrick is interested in painting the minis this summer. They come in plain plastic, but many people use model paint to spruce them up.

Early American Chrononauts

Patrick has won all four of our games of Early American Chrononauts (since I received it last week). We played two games last Friday and two games yesterday.

We've both enjoyed playing the original Chrononauts since I bought it last month. So far we both enjoy the Early American version more. I'm not sure if it's the game itself, the fact that we're understanding it better, or the fact that we're playing it with only two people.

Part of the reason I ordered it was to combine it with the original version for UberChrononauts. We haven't done that yet, but we're looking forward to trying that out.

Another reason Patrick is enjoying it is that he's currently studying many of the events in his 7th-grade history class. In the last few weeks they've discussed Andrew Jackson, the Trail of Tears and the Battle of the Alamo. All three are in the Early American Chrononauts timeline.

Sunday Descent

The boys and I finally had a chance to try out Descent yesterday. I had ordered the game back in March. We were all excited about trying it, but didn't really have a chance until yesterday. We had hoped to try it on Saturday with Al and Drew, but once Steven and Jeff were available, we decided to switch to another Fantasy Flight event game, Twilight Imperium.

Descent is a dungeon crawl game with 3D pieces that clearly owes a lot to Milton Bradley's 1989 classic, HeroQuest. Up to four players take the role of heroes, while another player controls the dungeon's monsters. I had picked up Heroquest in a trade in the fall of 2007 (in exchange for the WWI plane combat game Sopwith). The boys and I tried HeroQuest a few times and enjoyed it, but the copy I traded for was missing a few pieces. Descent also has more variety in terms of heroes, monsters and quests.

We had a good time playing yesterday. The game bogged down a little bit, as each of the boys was trying to control two heroes. This was probably a bad decision since we were still learning the rules. I think we will definitely enjoy the game once we're up to speed on the rules.

Space ... The Final Frontier

The gang got together for some gaming yesterday. We had originally discussed attending The Geekway to the West gaming convention, here in St. Louis, but our schedules were a little full. We decided to save the money and check out the game room at Al's new place.

Since we had a full day, we decided to try out Twilight Imperium (3rd Edition) by Fantasy Flight Games. TI3 has become one of our favorite "event games" since Al bought it a couple of years ago. Al, Steven, Drew, Andrew, Jeff and Patrick played. (I helped Patrick out, since it was his first game, and I also served as "Rulebook Guy.")

The game is set in space. Each player represents a race of beings that builds ships, expands, takes over more planets, researches techonology and expands some more. It combines the stock mechanics of most "civilization" games, such as a technology tree and lots of plastic pieces representing lots of different types of units. It also has a few Euro elements, such as trading and strategy cards (that are similar to the role cards that are in various Euros).

The game is a lot of fun, but its downside is the time it takes to play. We started setting up at 4 PM, took our first turns about 4:45 PM, took a 45-minute dinner break about 7 PM and finally quit about 12:30 the following morning. The winner is the first to reach ten victory points, and we had a three-way tie for six when we called it. We've only finished one game -- ever -- and that took about twelve hours. We might be a little slow. (After all, our group does have the person who invented "fake thinking.") But I can't imagine a group of five or six finishing this game in less than eight hours. I found a fun video on YouTube that is a a stop-motion video of a three-player game.