Ludocracy Now

I am certainly blessed—not necessarily with good luck or skill… but with friends who game.  Whenever possible the actual people involved in the following have helped reconstruct the events as they happened.

The Castles of… I don’t want to talk about it.

Ben, pictured looking like a younger version of Jake, perhaps sharing some sort of genes due to having the same mother and father, said he was up for playing Burgundy due to his brother’s recommendation.  “Finally,” I thought, “a respite from my losing streak.”  Apparently I didn’t think hard enough.  We both worked the #1 beginner board and I lost 183-181.  I could have tied points-wise if I hadn’t profligately spent two silver on a worthless black market tile (would have lost anyway to the tie breaker).  I let Ben get three mines in three rounds.  That has been a HUGE indicator of loss for me.

ConHex

Jake and Ben have played Ketchup and Hex before so I knew Ben would be up for an abstract like ConHex.  This game is so great.  I prefer it to Hex (well, at least at my skill level) in that I think it’s more prone to changes in momentum—I can come back from three miserable moves to still win (maybe this has less to do with the game than people’s collective experience, I don’t know).  I won both very close games and needed something mindless to follow.

Crokinole

Yeah so I lost the first three games I played against Ben to 100 points.  Keep in mind I have logged over 70 Crokinole games to his zero.  Some people just get it.  I did win the fourth and I was saved more losses by Jake and Jeff showing up.  Jake and I teamed up to win a team battle against Jeff and Ben.

Hansa Teutonica

We didn’t have a whole lot of time before I needed to yell at a television screen so we played one of my favorite three-player games that I can’t seem to win (obviously Jeff was not interested).  My 24 points on the Coellen table did (finally) give me the six-point win.  (I say “finally” because I always focus on Coellen and it never seems to work.  Perhaps sibling rivalry was working in my favor this time).  Because I love the game so much I wasn’t empathetic enough to know how much the others enjoyed it at the time, but I did just text Ben what he thought and he replied that he gives it a “four out of five” and says it was “better than a law seminar.”

Let’s get some more games in—specifically Eclipse! Or Summoner Wars!  Or seriously more Burgundy so I can break my losing streak!  Until next time, folks.

Saturday gaming with some BGG friends!  Five hours and three games.  A good day.

Antiquity

I wanted to make sure to get a granary out right away, not knowing if people were going to explore all over the place.  Glad I did—never took a grave for famine the whole game.  Mike and I both took San Christofori for the storage, next turn Shaun took Santa Maria.  An ambitious choice that paid off for him.

I annoyingly explored two wines in a row which probably added on one more turn than necessary to achieving my winning condition, but I was gathering up everything I needed.  Mike switched to Santa Barbara and would have won if he hadn’t been unable to pollute due to Shaun’s Dump + Expansion strategy—he was forced to take graves-a-plenty.  Shaun had me completely surrounded and all the buildings built (or so we thought) the same time I gathered my final wheat to complete San Christofori.  He won the tie break.

As we were cleaning up, we realized Shaun had never built Storage and it was unclear as to whether he could have squeezed it in one of his three cities (he had one wood left over, but we had packed most of the game away at this point).  Anyway, my one upsight from this game is this: I threaded the needle too fine in accumulating my three of each good.  I only put men into the fields to farm near to the minimal of each good I needed, but I was never really troubling for men.  If I had pushed it a little, I would have had food to out run (for at least a little bit) Shaun’s Giorgio.  Also, my granary was a huge help, I avoided graves for most of the game (got two due to no room for pollution).  Until proven otherwise, I will almost certainly begin the game with one—maybe less valuable in a 2 player game?  Remains to be seen.  Great fun, and I’m nervous for when Mike doesn’t attempt an “unconventional” strategy… will we have a chance?

Kingdom Builder

This is a game I’ve had on my watch list for a while as it has come highly regarded by many people with good taste.  The rules were simple so we got into it pretty quickly.  The three scoring conditions were: horizontal rows, settlements near mountains and area majority in each district.  I and Mike were close on most of these at the end but I had way more settlements touching mountains (basically it was all I focused on) to win my first ever play!  It was fun, but will probably stay off my buy list—for now.

Hansa Teutonica

Ah, Hansa.  I will never win this game.  I was probably near the lead about 2/3rds of the way through and didn’t have the good sense to push an end game.  I was hanging out at 3 actions to Mike’s 4 and Shaun’s 5 and as the game continues that deficit gets worse and worse.  Serves me right, I got last by a healthy margin.  Love this game, though.

Good day for gaming and it may not even be over!  I may be able to squeeze a Burgundy out of Jeff later tonight.  We shall see.

Nothing beats a nice Monday game night, especially since it can distract you from watching your favorite baseball team implode.  Am I right?

Anyway, Jake came over for 3 rounds of Fjords (I won 45-41) and 4 rounds of ConHex (I won first three, Jake took the fourth).  Erik showed up and although I again put Castles of Burgundy up for suggestion, we turned to Hansa Teutonica, as I was eager to avenge my miserable last place showing.  Jake complained of never having a coherent strategy while Erik and I blocked each other as much as possible.  I let my score marker sit at 18 points as I tried, and failed, to expand my network.  When Erik ended the game with the final bonus marker, Jake’s six office network multiplied by a filled key skill gave him the edge for a beginner’s win.  Very difficult game to tell who is winning during the course of the game.

We finished with a not pictured game and a half of Taluva.  Jake and I both built our final tower on the same turn each with seven huts left.  He, however, was ahead in turn order.  I managed to go out right after him for second place with Brekke in a distant third, bewildered.  Another very difficult game to analyze.

Great fun, and some possible rounds of Cosmic Encounter coming up tomorrow night!  I am very excited.

First, and most importantly, happy birthday to Puss (née O’Hara)!  The big girl turned 3 today and celebrated by having a lot of cat nip and shedding all over the place.

Then, Erik and Tom came over for a little gaming before I take off for a long five day weekend in Madison/Chicago.  Tom wanted to play something new, Erik not so much:  Hansa Teutonica was the perfect option!

This round lasted much longer than our previous tries.  Erik and I were much more wary of completing routes with others’ controlled cities on either end.  I quickly nabbed the routes to increase Privilegeum and Libera Sophia (uh, the colors one and the book).  Then I dumped a merchant on the Coellen table for a nice 8 points at the end of the game.  I then was sitting on zero points for quite some time until I worked up a cross-map connection between the two red cities.  After that happened, I spread out my network but was continually blocked on the key route.  Fine with me, I decided to push for a quick end to the game and was helped along by Tom who also had a merchant on the Coellen table and just didn’t want to get last.  Together we ended the game before Erik could get anything (specifically an 11 point Coellen play) going.

One thing we all didn’t realize was the extra 2 points per controlled city in the end game scoring.  This makes sense—the theme should encourage trade network building, even if increasing your skills (“leveling up”) feels more fun.  Since I was the only one really working on network building, I had many more cities in my control than Tom or Erik.  This helped me to a healthy win.  A game with such subtlety and plays so different every time:  Great game.

Speaking of great games, Biblios hit the table twice more afterwards.  A quick card game with agonizing decisions.  First game, Tom collected nearly every suit I had, but with more points and I took a solid last place.  Second game, my hand was flush with cash… and so was the auction deck: nothing worth buying at all.  Erik won the first game and Tom the second (although Tom really should have won the first—the final picture is him souring off about discarding some valuable red cards for worthless gold).  We all did get a victory under our proverbial belt last night so everyone left happy!  And the half bottle of Redbreast we consumed sure didn’t hurt.

I am off to Chicago with my opera loving lover so there will be no updating from me for a while, but I am hankering to do a game exposé or two when I get back for old times sake.  Until next time and stay safe this St. Patty’s day weekend.

I’d write up a session report of our two games of Hansa Teutonica, but I’m sure you’d all rather I spend the time editing* our awesome panel discussion.  Needless to say, I won both games.  I am king cube pusher!

*I gave up on editing.  If we don’t get it in one take, we just don’t get it.  Check back later today for the link to the ‘raw’ video!

I am back on the board gaming horse, everybody!  Yesterday saw two new-to-me games get played: Tobago and Hansa Teutonica.  Kassie was also kind enough to make some excellent beef stew.

Tobago is a game of treasure, amulets, idols, curses and deduction!  We played this game twice, with Derek taking the first win and me taking the second by avoiding having a presence in each of the cursed treasures and cleverly using amulets to remove location cubes.  There were cries of “This game needs more curse cards!” which, you know, tells you what kind of people I play games with on Sundays.  We all enjoyed the game and I would certainly play it again—it’s a game that will appeal to all gaming groups, I should think.

Next up was a three player game of Hansa Teutonica.  After a quick spin through the rules, we took our first turns and found that the game moves quickly.  I never felt like there was any down time.  The game also ended quickly because we misplayed the prestige point assignment rules thereby doubling the number of points Kassie received every time someone finished the Privilegium route.  Chalk it up as a ‘Learning Game.’

Another crowd-pleaser with this one.  Fast paced, subtle strategies, screwing the other people over—big thumbs up from me.  I now know the rules well enough to teach this to more of the LudoBunch.  I could see it becoming our Euro go-to once Caylus outstays its welcome.