Gemblo

This is the first time that I have attended John’s weekly gaming group. Why? Well, because it is held during a work day. But, since the year is winding down and everyone is leaving for vacation. I figure that I can pick and choose which days I work and which I use for vacation. I figure I should use my vacation for something worthwhile.

We started out by playing Gemblo. This is a new Blockus-type game that uses hexagons instead of squares and is playable by six people. The only problem with it is that it is slightly harder to visualize how your remaining pieces fit in the remaining space on the board. What was amusing was that Mike was fustrated during the game since I did not move immediately. However, I felt vindicated since I won and Mike finished in last place.

Kaivai

And I found enough gamers willing to play a new, meaty game called Kaivai. Things were looking up for the day! I would classify it into a middle-weight meaty game. Play could even be sped up once people were familiar with the rules of it.

Lexio

And then we pulled out another game by the same makers of Gemblo called Lexio. It is a trick taking game that is played with big, thick, over-produced tiles. Well, Pagat would classify this game as a climbing game. It is very Tichu like. With a few exceptions. There are no partners. There are only four types of groupings for tile play (single; pair; set; or 5 of a straight, flush, full house, four of a kind + 1, or straigh flush). And the 2 is the highest number. This gives an ordering of 3,4,5,…15,1,2 within a suit. The misery comes when the first person goes out. Then, each person has to pay the difference in the number of tiles between themselves and everyone else. The real misery is that having a 2 in your hand doubles the difference! This causes some real anxiety since you have to balance keeping a two in your hand to win a round or playing it early (and risk loosing the round) just to get it out of your hand.

The bonus is that it is possible to play Tichu with this game!

Caylus

Another quick game of Caylus. And this time I started second to last and had a hard time trying to get a grey cube in order to build a castle. This game also played differently, with very few buildings being built and no grey buildings were built until the last round.

Tichu

And after that lesser Tichu-like game, it was only natural that we play the greatest Tichu-like game there is. The ultimate Tichu-like game called Tichu.

Another gaming day in South Oklahoma. There were some popular games out to play and a gingerbread house.

Antiquity

On Thursday, we planned to play a four player game of Antiquity at the start. And this was a very good thing since I stayed with the same players pretty much throughout the day. We played all meaty games and avoided being stuck in a fluffy game.

Antiquity is an interesting game and one where I wished that I ordered it when it was in print. Currently, one store is selling it for $150! It is a game of resource building. And when you have the rules explained to you, you think to yourself: “everything connects and makes sense.” For example, you man a cart house and place a person on a forrest tile. Then, that tile and all surrounding forrest tiles are replaced with grassland tiles, and then a tree resouce is placed on top of the grassland tiles. Once a turn you take a tree resource. When the last resource is taken, the person comes back into your supply. Then, you can man a cart house and place a person on that grassland tile. You can have this person plant wheat, wine, olives, or sheep. Then you place a pollution marker and the appropriate resource on all surrounding grassland tiles. You take a resource per turn until exhaused. Tiles that have pollution cannot produce again. Also, each city you have produces 3 pollution that you have to place in empty tiles that you can reach. This slowly starves the board.

Another thing that you have to worry about is famine. Famine increases throughout the game. If you do not have enough food then you have to place graves in your city. You may be forced to put graves over your buildings which disables them.

Caylus

Ah, Caylus. The most hyped game eva! And I am glad that I played it. We had four people that knew the rules already and played rather quickly. This was a good thing. I concentrated on the victory favor track. I made one mistake during the game by spending my last dollar and not reserving one for the favor tile. I almost pulled a Marty. Fortunately, I was able to drop out first the next round to receive a dollar. Adam chose to end the game early when he realized that he could not beat me and he did not want to allow another turn for others to beat him.

Neuland

Fortunately, Marty brought Neuland and suggested that we play it. This was on my play list for a while now. I hope that they reprint it with better graphics sometime.

This is an interesting game where you spend action points to move your marker around a track on the board. You must end up on an unoccupied spot and also must be behind where you started previously. The most action points that you can spend is 10. Sometimes it is possible to spend a couple of action points, finish your turn. And then have it be your turn again.

Timbuktu

Tonight the Rozmiareks showed up which was nice. And since Shea was there, Roxanna showed up with Dylan. Adam and I were a little late in leaving work which meant we arrived at 6:30. This meant that there were people waiting to be let in. Its a good thing when gaming can start on time! I had originally wanted to play Caylus tonight but switched to Timbuktu when the Rozes picked out Timbuktu to play. This is an interesting game with a light amount of deduction in it. I started out strong by loosing only a couple of my goods to thieves. However I was subjected to the one negative luck-of-the-draw aspect of this game: that is learning that thieves are stealing from position 1 (you draw this card 2/5ths of the time). This means that you must randomly pick one of the other 4 spots and hope you don’t find the other 1 thief. This happened to me. And also in the latter half of the game, when it was my turn to move, I had no safe spots to move to. This really hurt me and moved me to third place.

Fairy Tale

Roxana showed up and we convinced her to postpone going to Best Buy and buying an iPod mini and instead play a light game. Ed chose Fairy Tale. I was going strong until the last round when no cards came by to help me. Its still a cute, light, and fun game.

Tichu

Everyone left except for four trick taking players. Which meant the Tichu smack-down started. I picked Adam as my partner. On the first hand, the other team Tichued and one/twoed! We were at a disadvantage! However, after that, we dominated them with 6 Tichues (2 from myself) while they got most of the points.

Carcassonne The Discovery

Well, since Russ Williams was showing up at William and J.P.’s house for gaming, I decided to show up as well. It was nice to see him, and tonight would be the last night to do so since he is moving to some foreign land. Initially, I thought we could play Caylus, but that is asking a lot of the Russ-group. So, instead, we let Russ pick the quintessential Russcon game of Carcassonne. I was doing good in the game until Clayton completed a section for everyone except for myself. This essentially moved me back 22 points. It was an alright game. But I own too many Carcassonne games and this one is not significantly better than its predecessors to justify a purchase.

Tichu

Ah, with limited choices, it is hard to resist playing this other quintessential russcon game. I think that it is more so recently than Carcassonne. Jeffles was in an interesting mood tonight. He was playing this game and Carcassonne simultaneously. He can do this since the Carcassonne players play slowly and your really dont need to pay attention to their moves (just look at the board and play your piece). What was amusing was that were were winning 680 to 420 (even with a failed Tichu call by Jeffles that hand), and Jeffles announces that one of us is going to call Grand Tichu. And I believe him. So I pick up my first eight cards, see total crap (well, ok, one ace), and quickly pick up the rest. And then Jeffles calls Grand Tichu. Fortunately for us, we not only made it, but also 1/2ed for the win!

Zirkus Flohcati

Since I had to leave in a little bit, William suggested this cute little quick game. I was able to get two trios out early. But immediately after that, Adam calls a Gala Show for the win.

Caylus

The waves of hype eminating from Mike have created a Tsunami. So it was no surprise to me to find out that he ran over to a FLGS and bought it at MSRP. Thanks for taking one for the team, Mike! My copy probably won’t arrive until January.

So, after disc golf, we rushed over to Mike’s house for pizza, beer, and Caylus. This game was different than the last time I played. The Bailiff moved very quickly (usually two spaces). There was no hosage with the Provost. And there was only one green building that was built. So that is a good sign of replayability.

And during the game Mike took another one for the team by doing most of the legwork to stop John from building a blue building (which would have given him 25 points). Jon kept pipping me during the building the castle phase which gave him the favors. Which he took on the victory point track and which gave him the win.

Sushi Express

For the first game of the night, we broke out another new game from Adam Spielt. This one could handle the six players and was supposedly a light filler game. So, I read through the three pages of rules and we were off playing. This is a push your luck game of sushi delivery. However the sushi theme is non-existant. For example, you want to collect different types of customers but it would have been more thematic for them to be different types of fish for the sushi. Anyways, the mechanics are of the push your luck variety. You start out picking a number from 2-12 where you think that either you will roll that number (out of two attempts) or the people on higher numbers will roll for their number. Once a number is made, all bets that were on numbers that are less than or equal to that number can move. And when you move around the board, you can collect a customer. Halfway around the board is a park, where you can collect an action card which will give you special abilities. And Adam figured out that in a six player game, who ever bets on the 7 will move to the same place after lapping the board. And he used this to always go back to the park and collect an action card. Which effectively broke the game. We tried to get him off of that position by taking the 7 spot before he could, but he just played another action card to go onto the same spot. Of course, 7 is in the middle of the choices, so he would usually move after other people had moved. This gave up some good unique customer card choices for himself.

Gods x 2

Another new game from Adam Spielt. This time we played the limited reprint of a downloadable game from Michael Schacht. It took us a liitle bit of time to figure out what the translated version of the rules were talking about. And after we got through the rules, we still had questions and thought that something was missing. That something turned out to be the correct version of the rules! So, I downloaded the new version for the new game and we figured everything out.

This is a game where we are trying to convert 4 tribes of followers to our religion. The players are gods after all. There are two choices of tiles that are drawn from a bag and it costs us action points to place the tile. Strong tiles that can convert many worshipers at once will cost many action points to place. Weaker tiles that can only create one follower for you cost less action points to place. Then there are less usefull tiles which are mainly used to block other gods from stealing your worshipers. These actually give you an action point to place.

In the first game, we misplayed that discarding a tile meant out of the game (where it should have been back into the draw pile). This was used to hose people since they would discard opponent’s strong god tiles out of the game (many of mine were). We also noticed that this game was reliant on the “luck of the draw”. If you were lucky and drew tiles that created followers for you, then you were on your way to winning the game. Otherwise, there was not much you could do except shake your head and curse fate. For the next game, we played so that we refreshed the tile selection after every draw and not at the beginning of a turn. This would give you a little more of a chance that a useful tile would show up. Well, I won both games but it was because I had the better luck (or fate). I think the rules need another tweak.

Carolus Magnus

Doug brought out a game that I haven’t played in a while. It is a good three player game but the constant stream of new games hurt its chances to be brought out to the table. Unfortunately, I started off badly. Doug was in the lead and John was in second. And also unfortunately, John was attacking me instead of attacking the leader. I could only hold it off for a few turns before I finally set Doug up for the win.

Mu

People still didn’t want to leave for the night. So we played a few hands of Mu. Not for points, but just for practice.