by Steph
Hi Folks! HAPPY 4TH!*If you celebrate that kind of thing*Looking forward to this coming week!!! But, first I will recap on last week! :D
Monday night Ron was away so he didn't come to Monday night games. It was hosted by Geoff since Joe was away. They were all playing fast games when I got there and when they finished up Geoff, Bill, Marsha and I snagged Yokohama to play.
I had just played a few days before but I knew I wouldn't have a chance in the rest of the week to play it again so I was on board!
Geoff got to explaining this game- the player aid definitely helps for explaining purposes! He had only played once but did a great job explaining it. I jumped in only a few times, I don't think I was that disruptive when he was talking. At least I hope not. haha
Marsha was wide eyed and I just had a feeling she wouldn't enjoy this game so much.
After the first 2 turns Marsha made a comment on how she just didn't like it that much. I was nervous for the rest of the game. Turn by turn I was trying to help her and Geoff was the same. I was trying the trading house strategy and it was working quite well for me.
I seemed to always be a cube/ assistant or $1 short of what I needed to do and I needed more missionaries working the streets for me. Geoff thought I was so far in the lead and I should have rushed an ending. I probably could have ended it 3 or 4 turns earlier. I wouldn't have gotten NEARLY as many points as I did and I think Bill would have beaten me either way. By taking my time I could ship my imports and fulfill extra contracts. It got me probably 30 points or more by waiting.
Bill still had a ton of stuff he was doing but when I could have ended it sooner he was still ahead of me. He had more tech and more flags for collection. I didn't think I could win.
In the end I took my time and I did pretty well, but, Bill still won with about 15 points more than me. I don't think there was a way to stop it but we will never know! Maybe I shoul dhave rushed the ending. I did make one crucial mistake which I should have thought more clearly about my situation. I SHOULD have ended it 1 turn sooner if I just saw what I needed to do. AH well. Live and learn! I am not sure Marsha or Geoff passed the 100 point mark but I think they were close to it.
In the end Marsha liked the game enough where she said she wanted to play again some other time. So, I take that as a victory. She was a bit lost at first but I think it was becoming clear for her by the end of the game.
Still Loving It!
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Next up was a game of Tichu. We were the same 4 players and managed to convince Marsha to stay and play. Tichu is about the only game that will get her to stay. :P
We cut for partners and I was teamed up with Geoff. Yay! :D Geoff knows I am aggressive. Last game we played Marsha and Ron beat us up and I am pretty sure since I didn't ever call Grand. I only win games I call grand in, right?
Well our game was going pretty well. I think Geoff called Tichu once and I managed to make 2 (!) Grand Tichu calls! Success! I never remember to take a picture of my Tichu calling hands. Geoff snapped a picture at one points I forget if he had called Tichu that time.
There was one hand I had 2 aces, dragon and a 10-6 straight in the starting 8 cards. I managed to call grand but it was pretty risky. My hand was actually pretty good after that. Got passed another A and pair of 2s. I could have used the Phoenix that Geoff had more than the A since I had the bird and could have made a SUPER LONG straight.
Somehow we still managed it and I made my call. It was great! I am always excited to call grand even if my initial 8 cards aren't always the BEST. But, I like a risk.
Great game that Geoff and I ended up kicking butt in and taking names.
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The final games of the night was actually MANY games of Pit.
I think we played 6 times? Whatever the amount it was too many for my taste. I like this game in the blue moon and when I do play only a few rounds for my fill. One HAS to compare to Happy Salmon once you have played it and Happy FISH is just SO MUCH BETTER!!!!!
Of course no one in my Monday group agreed with me but they also haven't ever played Happy Fish.
This was not a very yelling or excited group for playing pit with. No yelling or chaotic motions like the normal games of Pit that I have played. The Fun group I think had a better time playing it than the Monday group.
In the end I lost every round and find the game meh. I don't really enjoy it. Happy Fish on the other hand is a true winner.
Moral of the story. If you like Pit you should get Happy Fish aka Happy Salmon. It is way better. :D
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Tuesday night I had a sudden urge to play Castles of Mad King Ludwig.
Ron doesn't care either way. I pick a game and we play. He is pretty easy going. Sometimes I make him happy and pick Nations. lol
This game is not my favorite at the 2p count. I think it does work better with more players simply for the auctioning factor. I like the challenge of trying to place the tiles in the line up for $. You want to get top $$ for the tiles but you also don't want people to chinch out and buy stairs.
Alas, we played 2p and neither of us decided to go for the moats. Common goals were most swans and most money. I did manage to get the majority for BOTH of those things. Ron was collecting $ for one of his secret end conditions and I would have done better had I gotten that. He didn't even score 1 point for money.
I did alright but it wasn't good enough to pass Ron in the final tally for points. He cleared out some stacks in his favor and he had a lot of orange end game cards to score him points. I DONT KNOW HOW I LET HIM WIN.
This is the game I can usually win at too. I guess I am just too tried to play games at night. Ron is just quick as a whip and excellent at games. I am not bad, myself but I am worse than he is. hahaha
Still a great game and I am happy to play it. I wish I had the polish edi. I am thinking I might buy that one and sell the one I have with the expansion. I am not sure I need the expansion or not. I like the idea of the swans but polish edi... so pretty.
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Wednesday I found a package on my doorstep that I had been expecting. Chickapig! He contacted me on Instagram and asked if I wanted a prototype of his game. It looked adorable and I like abstract games so I said yes! Send me a copy and I will play it!
Super cute game! No real rules for 2p game but we just played across the board with everything still set up. The object of this game is to get all your pigs across the board through the goal on the other side. You can move your hay bails and the cow otherwise when you move the pigs they move the entire direction until stopped by something. This action actually reminds me a lot of Ricochet Robots.
To move you have to roll the die and you get to move any number of things totaled to that value. If you roll a 1 then you can jump the cow ANYWHERE and drop a dung where he lands. The poop, if trampled later, will give the player a poop card which are all bad. You might lose your next turn or something. If you roll a 2 you can either move or pick up a daisy card for a good benefit in the future turns. I never got one in our game.
Otherwise you are just trying to get your pigs home safe.
It is an adorable game that I am glad he was able to send to me. I really like abstract games, though. The game came in a sack! Pretty unique. The bits are nice and there is a time for those thinking too long.
Ron and I just played 2p and I think it would be a bit crazier with more players all around blocking and rearranging the board.
To no one's great shock, Ron won that game. He like got in a pig on the first move! I got a little more defensive after that. I managed to catch up and only needed 2 pigs to win but he only needed the one. I was trying to block the best I could. I picked up a poop card, however, and then I lost my next turn. He was able to use the two turns to get his final pig in the pen. Doh!
Ron for the win. I look forward to playing this with 4p soon. Very cute. I wonder what the Monday night group would think.
the designer applied for a game page so hopefully that shows up soon! I think he is going to run a Kickstarter but I am not sure. I will be sure to let you know if he informs me!
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Later that night Ron and I got to playing Fields of Arle. I wasn't sure if we would have time this weekend to get this played so it was nice we could find time and play on Wednesday.
I had no real plans going into this game. I ended up getting some animals to help mitigate the cost for feeding in the summertime. I ended up getting some stalls and making some baby animals. I got a stable at some point even. I made lots of horses. I HAD to get my favorite 9 points carriage. Maybe that is why I always lose. I don't know.
I seemed to be doing very well, but I had the feeling I was losing, as I do. My problem is I never advance on the tool track. I had only 1 points for tools and Ron creamed me with like 19 points. I might win a lot of the early categories but it never seems to be enough to beat Ron over all.
This game I did fairly well with 125.5 points and Ron still owned me with 132 points.
I had a full barn and was shipping tons of things. I had almost completed my road fully. Ron snagged the 3rd 15 point building from under me. There was nothing I could do to grab it before him. I totally just got OWNED.
I love this game but, I really need to win it again. It saddens me that I can't win. I need to play against Riley or something. :P
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Thursday night was FUN GROUP! We had a gathering of 6 gamers and it was the perfect number to start the night off with Terra. Had I shown up a few moments earlier then I would have voted for America but I was happy to play this one again.
I am not exactly up-to-date on my world knowledge but it is always interesting to see what I can come up with. I was sitting on the wrong side of Joe so I couldn't use his SMAHTS to build my responses to. He definitely destroyed us all and I think I ended up tied with Riley as it stood. I'll take it. I have NO IDEA how many pounds of Amber are in the Amber room. I really over bid on that. But I DUNO!
Fun game but I like 'Merica better.
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Next up was, of course, America. Everyone almost right off agreed this was the better of the 2 games. Though Riley said he liked that there might be "2 areas" that are correct and it keeps it interesting, I guess. I am find with only 1 location being correct. I like the whimsical categories and pop culture. It is a lot of fun and I really don't know much.
This game I knew even less than Terra! The categories were like GPS and we had a nerd off between Adam and Joe with lots of talk I was blind to since it sounded like gibberish. They were debating this and that about GPS. I was like buhwah.
It was rather amusing though. They actually gave coordinates and Adam was SO SURE I guessed no accurate guesses. I guess that put cogs turning in Joes head and got him thinking and it ended up where Joe guessed the other place and he was accurate. I should have waited on my guessing no accurate till everyone passed! Nuts!
It was a great game. This is going to be a hit with any group to put peoples knowledge to the test. I had no hope for the Call of Duty card... I had seen the game being played before, does that count?!
I lost miserably. I think Scott actually won this game- it was hard to recall since I was just so far behind and everyone cleared the board too quickly! If not Scott than Joe, I am sure.
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Adam and Jeff left so I convinced Scott, Riley, Joe to play Histrio.
These guys actually enjoyed it a LITTLE bit more than the past group, which made me happy. I don't think anyone right out hated it. But Joe was trying to think of ways to redesign it just like Dan had done.
The game is pretty easy and I did a good job of teaching, I think, considering I just played it the time before like a month ago.
The game is just so damn pretty. This game is really tricky. The problem falls when you match too many people too many times. You really don't get much from that. Maybe if you are compensated for the matching by getting a coin too or something else other than a secret card.
This game we played correctly and had the end of show secret card in play for the whole game and you can score it twice. Didn't make much of a difference. I managed to persuade Scott to changing the play in the final moment to the show I needed for the second show. I ended up kicking butt because of it. I felt kinda bad, since everyone else had the other show they were voting for (even Scott!).
I ended up winning by like 15 points but Scott and Riley were close for second place and poor Joe didn't want to talk about it. We kinda screwed him over a few shows in a row. I was collecting the end points for actors and succeeding in putting the show on for the kings mood.
I like the game ok and I would play it more if more people enjoyed it. For now it is on the trade/sell list. :(
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I managed to convince Riley to stay for one more game of Stellar Conflict.
I had really wanted to try this out with 4p to see what would happen. The whole table was eaten up. I went with mostly big ships this game since when I played with Ron I went with a lot of little ships and didn't get the chance to play them all.
With 4p it was like a mad spree to get your ships on the table we all had 25 second before the clock ran out before be all finished! I had a LOT more time. Dang- the game changes dramatically with more players. I guess in the 2p game I was more cautious with Ron and where he was placing his ships it took longer to calculate.
This game since I had fewer ships I was just quick to place and not so quick to think what the consequences would be. Considering this, I did quite well. Riley had a ton of 0 point cards! What the heck Riley! I managed to kill like 3 0 point cards. USELESS!
I happened to place much better in this game than in the 2p game. I didn't blow myself up once! Hurray!
In the end it took a much longer time to calculate than to play. We were going for a while in the first 2 initiatives but then it picked up. Each player was doing their own damages and then we resolved the hits points.
Riley and I tied for the win! Grrrr. We both had the same amount of points and the same amount of ships killed and there is no further tie breaker from there. I guess we should have played TieBreaker. hahah
We shared victory! How lame! But I had a great time playing and I think everyone enjoyed it and Joe said he liked it a lot more than the original game Light Speed. Very fun game!
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Riley took off and I convinced Scott and Joe for one final game of Animals on Board. Or as we renamed it "Cuteness on Board". Cause yah.
Scott hadn't played so I explained it, better than the other time I explained it to Joe, and we got to playing. Joe was actually happy with my explanation this game. Well I have played it a few more times now, I know what I am doing!
Joe wants me to call him Anti-Noah. He had managed to collect 10 different species of animals. I was hanging on to the hops of another fox being up for the taking. I was holding on to 2 foxes almost all game. Joe snatched one up and Scott snatched another up from under me. I needed them so I didn't have a pair. I kept taking the hidden animal in hopes but it only left me giving up my pair of foxes and turtles to Noah.
It was quite a terrible game for me but I do recall Anti-Noah winning the game with his diverse pallet of animals. Scott and I just had too many pairs. But, Scott did manage to collect 3 of a kind so he did better than me. Yep! I was teaching, I lose!
Adorable game which is hard not to love. SO CUTE!
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Friday night brought around a late night game of Le Havre. Mina told me I HAD TO, so I did. I had been wanting to play for a few weeks now so it was time.
This game I made some good purchases and got my shipping line. I also got the Wharf! I went shipping like 4 times and it was awesome. I purchased 4 boats and was able to ship 11 goods per shipment. I ended up with 100 points in $ from all the shipments.
We had the special building in play that Joe H calls broken. I told Ron we could take it out but he said it was alright. I ended up picking it up It allowed me to get a 3 energy discount when I use energy in the main action- which is like all of the time. I essentially got all my boats for no energy cost and spending my 10 energy coke to ship my 4 ships. It was pretty sweet. I have to say I was legit because I specifically asked if Ron wanted to remove it when it showed up. He said no! He has no right to complain. :P
I picked up the bank when I could have had another ship to screw Ron over. Maybe I should have picked up the extra boat, but I got more points from the bank and I was feeling bad for beating up on Ron so much. (how come he never feels badly about beating me up?!
In the end I managed to win this game with 257 points and Ron didn't break 200. He never actually told me his score but, I KNOW I WON! :D
Yay! It was a great game and I was happy to actually do well. Love this game!
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Friday we were super lucky to find Scythe on our doorstep. New to me!
Ron had played a round or two at Essen and was very excited for it. The game looks amazing and the upgraded components are the bomb. When Ron put it on the table I said "Holy crap!!! Damn this board it so huge!!!" It ate up like out entire black table. Ron backed the extra large board option and let me tell you it is so worth it. Since there are a bunch of minis and resources all laying on the main board space gets eaten up quickly. It is just amazing. I didn't follow the kickstarter and was totally surprised by how much awesomeness this game holds.
I, for one, enjoy Euphoria. Ron didn't find interest there but I did and still own the game even though it gets played next to never. I mention this game since I believe it was Jamey's first game and he hasn't done me wrong since. We love Tuscany as a group too. I mention Euphoria since there are some ideas brought over from there into Scythe. There are no dice it he brings over the stars. You are to place stars to trigger end game. It is a very clever mechanic since while it triggers the end it doesn't mean whomever caused the end actually wins.
There are 6 stars to get rid of but 10 objectives to work towards. You don't have to focus on everything to do well int his game. Once the end is triggered there are no more turns but everyone looks are their heart rung and calculates points by that chart. The higher on the heart chart you got the higher the point values would turn out. You get points for stars placed, hexes controlled, left over resources, and a random tile that gives each game something a little different. In out game that tile gave points for building adjacent to lakes.
All game you are working to build up your empire and trying to fulfill different objective cards and get you buildings and mechs out on the board. It is an action selection game and each player has different abilities and powers they are using to try and gain control over different regions on the board for productions and area control.
Of course there is military to consider in this game but it is a sort of "nice" military in that your buildings can never be destroyed and all workers and mechs that lose just go back home. You get compensated with a military card, too. Of course, if you win the battle then you get to place a star in one of the 2 slotted spaces for military victory. You have a dial that you use to say I will spend x amount of military points (up to 7) and extra cards valued 2-5 per big figure I the region, if you wish. Since the military track is public knowledge and you are literally spending your status it might be easy to calculate if you will win a battle.
The actions are pretty much wonderful, it is easy to grasp if you have played a game like Eclipse. I do think this is easier thank Eclipse, however. Each turn you have the option of choosing 1/4 spaces on your personal player board to activate: trade, produce, bolster, move. Those are he main actions and you might have to pay to utilize them. A lot of the actions offers one thing or another, for example, trade you pay 1 coin and can get 2 resources of your choice or 1 heart. Additionally, each main action is paired with a secondary action to use if you wanted to. These actions are the same 4 for each player but they are all paired differently for each board. These actions you are paying resources to: upgrade, build a house, builds a Mech, or Enlist a recruit. Different boards cost more or less depending and there are a lot of good things to be doing.
Once you are on a spaces you have to move off of the space for your next action, unless you are red whose power is that they can use the same space over if and when they want. I know this since I was red :D.
There are a lot of other details but that is essentially all you have to know if you think you will like it. If you want more information just ask!
In out game we played the Super huge board! if you see the images below and you see the black line... Yah the bigger "half" of the board is the actual board used in the regular game on the reverse side... Just saying.
I picked red tiger, but it was hard for me since I love wolves more but Ron picked black wolf, Eric was blue muskox, Carrie played as white bear. My benefit was that I could reuse spaces without moving. Ron's ability was place unlimited stars for combat or objectives , Eric's ability was that his workers could swim across rivers ( otherwise you need a mech tech to tell you that you can cross...), Carries ability was allowed to take 2 benefits from the encounter cards (normally you get 1/3 to choose from and they are all awesome).
We were all shaky out of the gate not really sure what we should be doing and just seeing the options while trying to produce and upgrade. I knew I wanted to get a mech out early so I could at least cross the rivers to spread out. I needed to occupy 3 villages to meet my objective so I was focused on that. Eric was pestering me and he made it to the farms before I could even get ability to cross rivers and he was able to start building up his grain in take. I really wanted that but never was able to acquire that so the enlisting was right out.
I was getting my mechs out good enough but had one left over at the end. Not good enough I would say, since getting all 4 out is a star. Ultimately it all comes down to the most money at the end since everything converts to money so you have to be cautious of what you are spending you money on since points is points! Each star for me was worth 4 points so I really could have used any extra stars I would have been able to get.
Ron started out his military spree and never attacked me. I never had a battle and had Tons of extra battle cards that I could have been using. I was collecting them via the recruitment benefits. The recruitment benefits happen when the 2 players to either side of you take the secondary action that you have recruited from. If I recruit for mechs than each time my neighbors utilize the build a mech space I get a bonus. It is tricky to get the recruits out, but, so worth it! If you time it properly then it all totally matters.
I wanted to focus more on the heart track since you get a lot more points the higher up you are. But Ron ended it when I really needed 1or 2 more turns to make it happen. In the end Ron only hurt himself since he was on the bottom scoring for the heart track and he didn't make enough points to cover Eric's higher point scores. Carrie and I were in the low 40s for a final score. I think Eric had high 60s so it was quite a difference... Ron was low 50s.
Dang, I mean I only got 2 star up on the board before the game ended. I was only just beginning. I didn't have a time grasp for the game at all. I will make sure and play better next time. I'm already thinking how I can improve my game for next time. I simply can not wait to play again. It is amazing. I love it!!! Instant classic just so good!!!! Freak just look how much I wrote. I mean, I guess I have stuff to say about it. I can't wait to play again!
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Ron was being awesome and made us dinner. While he was doing that I taught Eric and Carrie how to play Troyes. Eric wanted to play a game with dice and since playing Kings Abbey last week reminded me of this game I suggested it.
I can't say I'm the best at teaching this game but I did recall it well enough. The actions I was less sure about but it is easy enough to look them up. Once we got going the game became clear to them and we played the final rounds pretty quickly.
This game Eric was basically destroying us. He took on the early red building and started eating up all of the event cards for tons and tons of points and influence. He only focused on that one building to gain cubes on the events and he took basically all of the red dice. Carrie and I were fighting over yellow dice and doing neither of us any good.
My end goal was $ so I was going for lots of Money and succeeding at that. I figured Carrie had the Church end condition since she was all about that. She actually had the influence card which fell right into Eric's hands. Eric of COURSE had the event end card and I didn't managed to get even one of them completed.
When the game finally ended and we counted up points I only managed second place. I actually thought I was doing better than Eric but I was WAY OFF. Eric nearly DOUBLED my score. I only ended with like 38 points and Carrie was close behind me. Eric had like 65 or something crazy high. He completely destroyed us. We really needed to take those red dice away from him. It was just a mess on our end. Next time we won't be so dumb! :P
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Carrie had expressed interest in learning Tichu. I think that we had taught her before and she kinda of recalled the game a little bit.
I teamed up with Carrie and Eric and Ron were a team. Eric had played before he remembered a bunch.
Carrie and I were doing alright this game mostly due to my failing at a few Tichus and Grands. BUT I made up for the failures with successes. So, it was sort of a wash. I know Carrie tried calling and didn't make it. But, Ron and Eric were just getting tons of bombs- and even with out hands we thought we would win we just got over bombed. Unlucky draws for us. We were close but ended up not taking the win this time! It was a success since that Carrie and Eric both very much enjoy the game! Well how could the not!
Boys for the win. Booooooo
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The final game of the night was America. Erica had played it the week before and was interested in playing it again so requested it.
Being the 4th of July weekend how could I argue! This game is super fun and the topics are wonderful. We played 8 rounds totaling to 1 game. We decided early that Ron was handicapped to 0 points for the game and winner was the best of the 3 remaining.
We had some cool topics and my knowledge was quite surprising when it came to NFL. I was almost dead accurate for all 3 spaces! It was shocking. 2/3 for NFL, are you kidding me! So good. I did surprisingly well for Serial Killers too... Maybe I watch too much Dexter. haha
I have to say this game is very interesting and fun. So excited to have it in the collection now. It will get tons of plays.
As for the winner since Ron was out and back at 0, I took the crown with Eric right behind me and Carrie behind him. It was a close game!
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Sunday morning bright and early Ron and I flew to Orlando For Dice Tower Con coming up. During the flight we played Le Havre on the ipad, YAY I WON!!! I won by 2 points! We also attempted to play Glass Road app, and yes, that crashed on us. It is one of the slowest apps adn then it crash when I tried to use the building in it. I think there is something wrong. I duno, not my favorite game to play on the app. We also played Star Realms, of course! He crushed me in that one though. It was a fast and painless death, though. :)
Ron and I were around in the afternoon looking for folks to play games with but no one showed up. We played a couple dice games to pass the time. We started with Qwinto.
Things were going so well and I thought the game was going to be over pretty quickly the way things were being rolled and Ron was getting X's we eventually stopped trying to get the high values and went and filled in the lower values.
It happened so that we were able to fill in our rows pretty well except for the high numbers and then it came down to who ever could fill their X's first or get lucky rolls and be able to fill in the higher values.
I ended up winning but it was a close game we had a pretty similar looking board but Ron got more X's. :P
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Since we hadn't played in a while I took out Rolling Japan.
Not Ron's favorite but he plays since he knows I love it so much! Bad rolling all around and bad placement for me. SO BAD that Ron and I ended up tied. That is the worst!
I should have placed differently and then it all would have been OK. Isn't that always the way.
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We went for food and then showed up at the tables again after. We brought some bigger games with us to play. Ron and I played a 2p game of Taluva.
This is a great 2p game but I do think it is better with 3p. There is more board interaction and squishing and more uneasiness between turns.
As it happened this was a 2p game and I managed to get out a tall tower. But later Ron was able to get out another tall tower for the win since there was nothing I was able to do about it. I was trying to get out my smaller tents and medium structures. I needed a 3rd area to control though and he was already on route to finishing the game. No hope for me this time. I don't think I am very good at this game.
While I love abstracts, this one is pretty challenging for me to see the board. I can usually "see the board" pretty well but not this game.
Ron destroyed me... boo. I will have to get him back today.
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Tom Vasel showed up and brought along a new game for us to try called Mystic Vale. He saw my post on facebook and showed up with a cool game looking to play. Very cool!
Mystic Vale- New to me!
This game I have wanted to play since I first heard all about it from Origins. It was a huge hit and has been since its release there. If you aren't familiar with the title it is a new deck building game from AEG that allows you to deck build and customize the cards you are using. It is a new twist and cool mechanic for the deck building worlds. Like many deck builders this game is also pretty theme-less but it doesn't bother me. The art is beautiful and that is really what matters, right?
Tom got to explaining the rules and Ron and I are genuinely gamers and picked it up with ease and could have probably taught Tom if we looked at the set up first.
End game triggers when the set number of points has been cleared and then we finish the round so all players get the same number of turns.
There is a display of "cheap" cards 2-4 cost, medium cards 4-6 cost, expensive cards 7-9 cost. There is always the stack of value 2 cards that give you extra buying power in which you can buy from. Each turn you can buy up to 2 cards using the orb symbols on the cards you have revealed. Each player has a deck of 20 cards that you can not remove from play. Each card has the opportunity to host 3 slots. When you are purchasing a card you add that card (see through) to one card you have just played. You can not cover a picture but you can use the blank space to either side.
The goal is to try and get the most points and to do this you are building/ customizing your cards to be the best they can be. Now, it works slightly different than the "normal" deck builder since you are essentially pushing your luck. In a deck of 20, 9 of them have decay. You pull cards to your display and reveal one at a time. the final card when you stop is not in play and remains on your deck face up. If you reveal 4 decay trees you bust. generally you stop when you have revealed your 3rd decaying tree. But if you really need that one more orb to buy a super awesome car you might say ehhh screw it I am going to push my luck and hopes of getting a single orb card with no tree.
I do like this aspect of the game since you can choose when you want to do the crazy turns or never try to.
As you are building the card you might be getting powers or benefits. So I was making a cool card that gave me points per armor head on the card and I had 2 armor heads so when that card was getting played I would get 4 points since both images were the same benefit. Other cards you might try to build up and get symbols to defeat the common goal cards. If you have symbols to use you can look at the top pretty art cards and say I have these matching symbols I can claim this card. It might be just points or it might be an on going benefit like mine which was spend 2 orbs to change 1 symbol into another symbol. I never ended up using it since I never found the chance to make it work.
The game is super fast, we actually shocked Tom with how fast we were at gaming. He was like "whoa this is a nice change of pace". I guess he games with slower folks. :P
I was collecting a lot of in game points and didn't manage to pick up the high value point cards from the common goals or just the end game points on the cards themselves.
Stupid Ron is stupid and won the game and the score was 28, I had 23 and Tom put on a poor show and ended with 13. haha He had is one awesome card which he was so proud about but never got to use. :)
It is a cool game and a cool idea. Even after 1 play I felt like it needed something more- so hopefully the expansion they are forming will bring more to the table. It is such a cool idea and I want to love the game. It just didn't wow me like I wanted it to. For me, it didn't leave me thinking about it (as I am still thinking about Scythe) and found it simply, ok. Not usually a good sign when after the first play you are saying when is the expansion.
I will probably end up owning it and playing it some more. I think people will enjoy it but it in no way replaces Star realms or any other deck builder I love.
You are supposed to take cards from each level "cheap" -"expensive" Tom made the point that we really didn't have to... It still triggers end game when the points run out. We could have used some more cards. We like ate almost all of the cards up before end was triggered. I suppose it is something to consider and maybe play that way from now on. Why does there have to be a set number of cards in the stacks when end is triggered by points. What if we don't see any POINT cards to acquire the points with? Food for thought.
I was happy with my Wolf Moon card right out of the gate. He is so pretty.
:star::star::star:
After much discussion with Tom about Gathering and game shows he creates and otehr new releases, Tom took off. It was cool to talk with him, he is a cool guy and I am quite happy he came along to play Mystic Vale with us.
Ron and I were stuck with should we play another game or not. We decided on playing 2p Brew Crafters.
This game was going pretty well for me until I missed out on $1 in the second year. I had to get a loan! It was a nightmare. I hate getting the loans- it is very bad and you lose lots of point is you accumulate them. Don't get loans, folks.
I spent my first year building my tech since that is what I do. I love getting the free winter actions! They are just too good not to work towards. Ultimately, Ron was doing the same thing and there were PILES of resources for the taking. I should have re thought my situation and picked up a storeroom to hole all the amazing resources for the taking.
Ron managed to get all that malt first, of course. I think there was like 12 of them. ugh so many and so good!
I picked up what I could when I could and I had a few hire workers helping me out. I was collecting extra points from my barrelhouse and hired help but it wasn't quite enough to beat Ron this time.
My STUPID loan caused me the game. Ron won this game with 59 to my score of 58! Loan is -2 points and that was that. SADDNESS! I wish I could have just paid it off... I had $2 at the end. But that is not the game.
I managed to make a couple 9 point stouts and those were the bomb. Ron did a lot of variety and snagged the tokens to go along with them. He had an extra worker for him and I just couldn't afford it. I had no other end game scoring points but just the ale I brewed and the points in game. It was SO CLOSE but SO FAR!
Awesome game and I look forward to playing it more this week.
:star::star::star:
The final game of the night was a late night Tichu. A couple stopped by late around 10:30 and Ron and I asked if they were interested. They were looking tired but said they wanted to play.
We had to do a refresher on the game for them, and had I known that I might not have suggested it. I didn't really want to do a learning game at that hour but it went ok.
The game lasted a long time. On the first hand of the game i did call grand. Hannah, my partner didn't hear me and passed me a J or something. She was also just learning and remembering the game. I still managed to make my bet.
Going forward in the game I was getting wishy washy hands and could predict easily enough if I would be going out first or not. It went on for like 10 hands before the game ended with Ron calling Tichu and they went 1-2.
Boys for the win, again. Booooooooooooooo Still love the game though. I want to be Ron's partner next time.
:star::star::star:
Here is one of my favorite views! Ron reading rules and all my games!
Thanks for following along! I hope you have an amazing week.
Until next week!
Happy Gaming!!!
-Steph
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