What I Played Today: November 20

Civilization: The Board Game, Dominion, Guild Wars

I have been bit by the Guild Wars bug again, it’s once again time to run around Tyria. This time I was once again lurking around the Guild Wars 2 site and looking at the calculator of the cool stuff you’ll get if you have done a certain number of achievements in Guild Wars, and I realized that I probably get a few more if I tried. So I logged in and started putting stuff in my Hall of Monuments. I apparently had a lot of miniatures that I hadn’t added to my collection, as well as five unopened birthday presents for all my characters. Every single one is at least 3 years old; I find that weird. So I managed to net four more points on their little meter of stuff I had already achieved, just not logged, and then I looked around and realized there was almost a full expansion pack of content I hadn’t done yet. Oh boy.

Also played the Civilization board game again, this time with wonders. I played the intractable Germans, who are vicious when it comes to armies, getting two units for free at the beginning and an additional unit every time they upgrade their troops. My opponent was concerned over the strength of my army, which I was tearing around the board visiting all the villages, so he hunkered down, building walls and extra units in anticipation of my attack. Seeing that an attack would be hard-met, I decided to move towards economic victory instead, and I was a little concerned how easy it is to ramp up to 15 coins. Four technologies in level 1 and 2 have abilities that add coins to them for a relatively small price, and while you can’t use them more than 4 times, that’s still gets you 25% of the way there for each tech. With the other methods of getting coins, it’s a bit easy to get there, and pretty difficult for your opponent to slow you down. Maybe it’s a lot harder if you don’t have a ton of resources from the villages, and I happened to get some good great people, but I’m still a bit concerned.

Also a game of Dominion, this time combining Prosperity with Alchemy, which creates some weird interactions. The most expensive card from Alchemy, Possession, doesn’t seem so difficult in an environment with a lot of treasure running around, and with fewer actions on the field, the heavy hitters from Alchemy aren’t as good. This game saw the City card drained pretty quickly, by its status as the only card that could be gained from University, and the midgame was full of both players draining their deck with their cities. The possessions were weird as well, when I managed to screw myself by using a golem during my opponent’s turn, which dropped a possession on myself as well as Goons, which is worthless to me because any chips gained aren’t grabbed when a person is possessed. So I managed to lose pretty soundly.