What I Played Today: November 30

Spot It, Civilization: The Board Game

I finally got Civilization on the table at Game Night, pulling in the store’s resident older guy, and some Pathfinder player who got kicked off his table because there were too many people. The Pathfinder kid picked it up really quickly, understanding all the mechanics and even figuring out diverse strategies that I hadn’t noticed (like buying Banking after fully populating markets so that his economy suddenly jumped). The older guy, however, had a bit of trouble grasping what happened when and which resources did what, which was too bad, because I was worried he wasn’t having fun.

I played as the Russians, which gain an extra army and can send in the KGB to steal enemy’s tech. I decided to use this to my advantage and strove towards the technology victory. I also grabbed the wonder than reduced the trade cost for purchasing technologies by 5, which worked great. I kept my armies far afield, near my opponents so they freaked out and bought armies instead of anything useful, and got a major boost when the Americans attacked the Romans in a surprise hit, which shrunk his standing army to none, so I could technically do whatever I wanted. If only he didn’t have the two Great Generals hanging around his city, I could have easily marched towards a military victory.

But we had to give up early because the store closes at a certain time, so we didn’t have a chance to complete the game, or declare somebody a winner because of the four different victory conditions. I was impressed with how well the Pathfinder guy got into it. I’m a bit of a roleplaying snob, and have little but contempt for the Pathfinder franchise as it is now, and was weary when I heard the boardgamers would have to share space with the Pathfinder league to keep them from infighting with the 4E crowd. Considering that I felt compelled to leave the game room when one of their members starting loudly singing a crappy parody song from the Internet in its entirety, you will understand that I find a lot of them annoying. But I found this guy (whose name I failed to even ask, I’m a bit of a jerk) fun to play with, even if he was a bit overenthusiastic. Gaming erases borders, or whatever.

Also played a pickup game when we were waiting for a group to stop playing Dominant Species (a game I want to try, dang it), called Spot It. There are a bunch of cards with pictures on it, and the main principle of the game is to match up the pictures between two cards. Simple, and a bit kiddy, but a fine idea.