What I Played Today: August 17

7 Wonders, Cosmic Encounters, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride

A game of 7 Wonders with seven people was played at around 7 p.m. It went alright, I didn't win, and this game somehow always ends up being harder to teach than I think it should be. I mean come on guys, can't you juggle literally 20 different types of icons and immediately know what they mean?

A game of Cosmic Encounters, which went oddly. One of the races picked got to choose who attacked who every turn, which was crazy. I had a race that didn't lose enemies to the warp when I allied with people, and I used this ability to constantly throw in with the defender and get more cards. For some reason, this pissed off everyone, and nobody wanted to be my friend, so I didn't win. That happens.

Then a five-player game of Pandemic, which we totally won somehow! We had some good roles and were pretty creative with our ideas, and also we managed to completely cure the blue disease by my third turn, which really helped, and although we did have a turn where there were three outbreaks, we managed to get it under control and won. And I cured two of the diseases! Go me!

Then a game of Ticket to Ride Europe, which I sweeped. Everyone was really focused on building tracks in Western Europe, and they completely ignored Eastern Europe, which I bought up. I also completed my long route, which let me hit triple digits. Good for me.

What I Played Today: July 24

Three Dragon Ante, Pandemic, Endeavor, Dixit

I played a lot of games today, mainly because a friend was in town after a long while and we had the whole day free. There was a lot of board gaming, interrupted by a nap and dinner, followed by even more board gaming.

We played a lot of Three Dragon Ante, my friend’s favorite card game that was released by Wizards for D&D about five years ago, and recently received a stand-alone expansion (which is mysterious in itself). It’s a clever game, with a lot of luck involved though, and has a lot of fun elements, even if you can potentially get screwed a bit. The game can end pretty fast too if you’re not careful, as it ends when someone is out of money, and if there a few high rollers on the table, that happens pretty quickly. But I feels like a fantasy tavern game, if a bit complicated, which is nice.

There were two games of Pandemic, one we lost horribly when the Far East exploded, and the other we won pretty decidedly...even though we weren’t playing quite right. We had forgotten to move up the infection track after the third epidemic card, which means the game was going a little too easy on us. We did go out of our way to make sure that we got the killer combo of dispatcher and medic. I played the dispatcher, and I was awesome, moving everyone exactly where they needed to go. It was kinda neat, I wish we were playing perfectly.

There was a game of Endeavor that I lost by one point. I tried a slightly different strategy, quickly ramping up my culture to get more dudes and “considering” war, but I didn’t follow through, and ended up losing by one point. My moves were pretty forecast too early, and a player went out of his way to steal points from me by declaring war on my interlinked colonies. But he didn’t win either...so...

Also, I had a very interesting experience with the Spiel de Jahres winner, Dixit. I introduced the game to a few relatively non-gamers, started the round, only to have everyone guess the image I used. Then...I was completely and utterly ineffective, able to score only 1 point. I never guessed the correct image, and only once did someone pick my image, it was miserable. The second game we played went better, I’m getting better at how to make a decent sentence, but man, this game kicked my ass, and I have a bit of a vendetta against it currently. Stupid, lousy, blood candle.

What I Played Today: March 26

Diner Dash, Dungeons and Dragons, Chaos in the Old World, Pandemic

Just a really quick update because I need to be getting to sleep so that I can do the same thing tomorrow. Got to PAX after getting some pastries about 1, where I got to stand in the queue room. The queue room is this great experience where you get to stand and wait. It actually can be really fun; there's a big board that has a lot of stuff happening to keep you entertained, and the energy of the crowd is great.

After that there was some wandering, a quick dash into the exhibit hall. I got quickly waylaid into playing the new console port of Diner Dash, and it controls pretty well, considering. My friend won an apron for beating me and getting the high score.

Then I played D&D Encounters for a few hours. The D&D Encounters model is neat, supposedly short sessions every week, in which you do a single encounter in an adventure. The encounters thrown at us were tough, but I was playing a heavy resist battlemind and was able to shrug off the majority of the damage. It was pretty neat, even though I spend a good 6 healing surges.

After that I went down to the board game rooms to see what was about. I walked past a game of Chaos in the Old World that was just starting up, and jumped in to play Nurgle. I thought that I was doing pretty well for most of the game, but a penultimate round slaughter of all my cultists kept me from getting a fair number of points, and the Sleenesh player had been killing peasants for fun all game, only for the last card to reward her 7 points for them, enough to jump her to 50 points and the win. But it was a good time, helping them learn how to play and playing this real tight tactical experience.

Afterwards, I played a game of Pandemic with them. Even with 4 players we lost. It was all time limit, we had the majority of the disease in the bag but we ran out of time. I'm starting to dislike that aspect of it, because that's a problem we really don't have any control over.

More planned tomorrow, including running an adventure with some new players.

What I Played Today: February 27

Dragon Age: Origins, Chibi Knight, Professor Layton and the Diabolic Box, Thunderstone, Pandemic

I started playing Dragon Age, mostly because I’m stuck on Mass Effect and I just couldn’t wait anymore. Apparently human rogues can only be nobles, which is weird, and the noble family has a really stupid name. These observations aside, I haven’t gotten very far, but I found some things mighty odd about the introduction. For one, whenever you get in a fight, you are suddenly, inexplicably covered in blood, even when fighting rats, RATS, whose splash radius has to be about six inches. How did the blood reach my shoulders, exactly? And, of course, nobody even blinks. “So, what was up in the larder? Have any trouble? I noticed you’re covered in blood, as you do. Would you like a sandwich?” More later when I get in the mood to play again.

I also played through a flash game called Chibi Knight. It was pretty standard, a bit of jumping and swinging, and a rudimentary leveling system. The only really interesting thing about it is its adherence to cuteness. Of course it’s chibi and silly, with a tiny little protagonist without legs, but all the voicework was done by the developer’s 5-year-old daughter. It almost sounds sickeningly sweet, but it’s turned out to just the right amount of cute. I wouldn’t recommend it, I just found its adherence to silliness endearing.

I finally got back to Professor Layton. It’s what it usually was, just wandering around and solving puzzles. I finally got to the big plot twist, when it turned out that something ridiculous happened, and we just went along with it and then walked outside and kept solving more damn puzzles. I keep getting stuck with the peg puzzles, and the game seems to think that they are the easiest thing in the world. They won’t give me any hints! But I’m still trucking, should get through this is a couple of days.

A few friends came down into the area, and we played a few games. We introduced them to Thunderstone, which everyone liked, except me. There was a lot of downtime during a 5-player game, and your plans often get spoiled by the time the turn get around to you again. The thunderstone also came up early, and a lot of heroes were tossed because of some jerk called the Archduke of Pain, so...it wasn’t the best game ever. But they seemed to like it. I still like Dominion a lot better.

(There was a great observation made by someone tonight about a completely different game, Munchkin. It was said by a great man that Munchkin can’t get out of its own way, that it tries to hard to match theme that it makes a crappy game, and I completely agree. That’s...all I got to say, but thumbs up.)

We also played Pandemic, and we lost again, even though we had everything completely under control. We ran out of time, which is completely arbitrary and is a bit of a problem when you are playing with 5 players. We just couldn’t get five cards of a color into someone’s hand, and we didn’t draw a scientist or a researcher. There’s a particular role that we draw EVERY TIME, the epidemiologist, which is not a great card, and yet we’re constantly stuck with her ugly mug, and we always lose. I almost want to toss the useless role out, because it never ever works.

What I Played Today: February 9

Carson City, Pandemic

Tonight was game night at the local gaming store, and so I showed up ready for it...maybe a bit too ready. I knew that one of the players had been hammering this worker placement game called Carson City, and it sounded interesting, so I read the rules last night, ready to play. Turns out I ended up learning the game better than he did. And while it was a real self-esteem boost, I felt a little guilty coming in swinging like that.

Anyway, Carson City combines worker placement with a neat map placement element and a small conflict mechanic. It seems to mush a lot of elements together, including role choosing which don’t actually interact with the main game very well, and some of it gets a bit lost, but it was still pretty fun, mainly because it’s such a short play. You only have four turns to get everything done, and the order that things are going to happen is very obvious. The game also makes a point to limit the cash you carry between turns, which can make a bit of a tough decision to spend for points or save to make big moves next round. I’ll definitely look into picking this up if I see it somewhere.

Then pretty much everyone left, and survivors played a game of Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative game that been the coop of choice since its release, and I tried to hate it for a long time. Naturally, with things you choose to hate, I hadn’t actually played or anything, as exposure to the thing can “force” you to admit that you’re wrong, but actually Pandemic isn’t that bad. It’s a bit crunchy and terrifying, mainly because there’s a lot that can go wrong and you’ll crash quickly and you’ve no clue what you should have done differently to make sure you didn’t lose (besides be psychic). But the cooperation aspect requires people to communicate, which is a great way to get to know a group around a table. What people focus on in a coop game is always interesting to watch.

Pandemic, though, only gives you one thing to really focus on. How screwed you are. The game is relentless in how often it throws more to worry about, and how you’re not going to be able to do what you want, merely because of the distance issue. Something is going wrong in Jakarta and you can’t do anything about it because you’re in Buenos Aires, so...cross your fingers. Most of your victories are sighs of relief at your luck, so it’s definitely not my favorite coop. That will always be Battlestar Galactica until something comes out to prove me different.

As for this particular game, we were doing pretty good to start with, although we had a few pretty unlucky outbreaks early. But we managed to cure a couple of diseases and one disease didn’t even threaten until two-thirds of the way through the game. We thought we had it under control, but it turns out that five player Pandemic makes things a little too hard. Sure, you have more roles available, but when an epidemic comes up every single cycle around the table...you’re not going to get the cards you need to cure the damn thing. The deck is spread too thin, and even having a researcher didn’t help.

Oh man do I go into a lot of detail. Expect some posts soon where I try to explain just what the hell I’m talking about.