What I Played Today: March 2

Dominion, Revolution, Endeavor

It was game night at the store, and a lot of people were late in coming, so those who were there started up a couple of games of Dominion. I was at a table with a couple who just started showing up recently, and we played in a very aggressive game, with both torturer and swindler, two of my least favorite cards. I ended up with 4 curses in the end, even after trashcanning about 3 or 4 of them. I still managed to win because the most aggressive player didn’t get much of an engine moving to make enough money to buy any provinces. We also ran out of curses about halfway through, which made life a lot easier, but it was a bit of a lowscoring game.

We moved onto the next game, and I grabbed the lightest thing I had, because I wasn’t feeling very intense. I picked up Revolution, a bidding game where you’re trying to get the most support before the flags are unfurled. I had played this game a number of times before and found that the rich will get richer in this game, as it’s tough to get the resources you need if you don't have them to begin with. I...wound up on the havenot side, as I lost by just over 25% of the score of the winner. It...went badly, and I have no idea what I did wrong. Probably underestimating my opponents, who picked up on it pretty quickly, but I wasn’t getting my units into the buildings in time. But...I also wasn’t getting in points during the game proper...I’m going to add it up to just being pretty stupid for about an hour.

My usual friends showed up by then, and we got Endeavor on the table. It’s a very trim resource management game, balancing your resources to get the best and most actions as you try to extend out of Europe to the new worlds and gain the most cities. It’s very quick for a game of its complexity, with a lot of limited abilities and a lot of second-guessing, as well as a great deal of interaction. It’s a great game, and I’m glad I got a chance to play it. Not that it went very well...I feel apart early on and couldn’t pick up enough to do anything about it. One of the players went out of his way to abolish slavery, which caused negative points for two players, something unheard of in a five-player game. Of course, those two players tied for first, so...yeah. Go slavery. But a fun night overall, all things considered.