Ed held his yearly Memorial day gaming. It is very similiar to his game days except for the presence of bratwurst. Mmmm bar-b-queued bratwurst. When I arrived, Susan was outside taking pictures. Apparently, in the country, there are all sorts of flora and fauna out there.

Die Dolmengötter

Mike brought out his new Eggert-Spiele game that he purchased in the previous Adam-Spielt order. The last time we played the game, it was flawed and broken. But apparently, he got a rule wrong (big surprise there). So we tried it again. It was alright. Nothing special or exciting. The theme is an after-thought and doesn’t grab me at all.

Fury of Dracula

Ed posted a weird note to rrgamers. It was meant to entice people to play a new game that he bought. When I watched a video of Scott explaining the rules, it seemed interesting. And when I found out that Ed was going to be Dracula and we were teaming together to get him, I just had to play!

This is a game that pits one person against others. Dracula is hidden but leaves a path of cards. When one of the characters moves on top of that card, it is revealed. Dracula has one card of each location, so cant normally backtrack. Revealing a previous location gives a clue where Dracula has been and might be going. You also know when Dracula is in the ocean because the card back is different (colored blue).

Dracula needs to be hidden for a certain number of days, spawn a couple of vampires, kill some of the characters (who conviently ressurect), or some combination. The players want to kill Dracula. Three times. Dracula never stays dead the first time! And Dracula has a host of minions that help him out. Bitten characters also give Dracula some information.

For our first game, we caught Dracula’s trail somewhat early. But he escaped into the ocean. When we found him the second time, we thought we had the advantage. However, one character (Mina) decided to fight Dracula when she was at two hit points. Mina was rolling very good numbers and killed Dracula twice. However, Dracula played a card that allowed him to move twice and escape. He then played a card that did two damage to Mina which killed her (giving Dracula more victory points — one away from winning). What killed the game for us was the next card Dracula played was a teleport card. He is now anywhere on the board. And he is about to win when the new day occurs. There was nothing we could do about it. Sigh.

Our mistake was drawing too many event cards. While the majority of the cards are for us, there are cards for Dracula in that deck. This is the only way Dracula can get these cards. And some of the cards were very beneficial.

Mykerinos

Mike brought out Ystari’s new game out to the table. This is a set collecting game where you fight for the pieces of the set by having the majority of tokens. Each tile has two sides. The front has a picture of a character. The back has a 2×4 grid on it and it may have a number of victory points associated with it. For each of the first three rounds of the game, there are 4 groups of 2 tiles next to each other (making four 4×4 grids). In the last round, there are 6 groups of tiles. Each player then takes turns laying tokens on the tiles. You can place one token by its self or two more tokens orthogonal to an existing token. Pyramids are blocked spaces. Play continues until everyone passes. We then resolve each of the four groups. The person in first place can either take a tile or place a token on the museum. The second place person has the same choice and third and fourth places can only take tiles if noone else had previously.

Placing in the museum increases the multiplier of the five different characters. For example, if at the end of the game, you have 3 tiles of Mrs. Blackmore (black pluses) and your multiplier is 5, then you get 15 victory points. Also, on the following rounds, the characters can give you special powers that you may use once for each tile (by tapping it). The powers are: placing two tokens to start, placing three tokens next to an existing one, placing on pyramids, taking an extra token from the general supply, and placing a token on the museum.

I initially got the “Sir Brown” tile and “Mrs Blackmore”. And I realized that I could use Brown’s powers to place more of my tokens on the musuem to increase my multiplier for Brown tiles. I also concentrated my tokens to get more Brown tiles. And this gave me the win with 5 Brown tiles and a multiplier of 12.

Mauer Bauer

A Russconner (Matt) finally showed up to Ed’s to play games. The groups do not seem to mingle very much.

Mike also brought out Mauer Bauer to play. This was the second time that I played it. And this time, I did not get many good cards to score victory points with. The luck of the draw, I imagine. Still, its not a bad game. Light, somewhat quick, and abstract.

Bunte Runde

We showed up at Tim’s after Disc golfing and lunch. We had six people there and expected more soon, so we started out with a light game. John brought out Bunte Runde and was successful in convincing others to play. I was a little worried there at the start. I wasn’t getting many points. But at the end, I was able to make up for it. And Mary (sitting on my left) got many points as well. And this was enough for the win.

Bluff

The call of the dice was heard. It has been a while since I have played this game. Everyone one but Tim was slowly loosing dice. And at one point, everyone had one die (Tim had 4) and an exact match was called. Fortunately, the house rule where you cannot loose your last die saved everyone (and Tim would win). In the end, it was down to me (1 die) and Tim (4 dice). And I was able to successfully whittle him out of dice for the win! In the last round I decided to put the red die out on 1 three. I would call whatever Tim did. I figured that he could either bump it up to 1 four or five. Or 2 of something. Fortunately for me, I guessed his number. So he went with 2 threes. And lost.

Railroad Dice 2

I like dice games. Combine that with railroads and you come up with an interesting idea. I first played the second game in the series last December. It is smaller lighter and faster than its predecessor. And it also has a bad vibe in my game group. So I am reduced to playing it elsewhere. Which is funny, because Jon and John from my game group played it with me.

Jenseits von Theben

Tim owns a copy of this game (like every other game it seems). And I have been wanting to play it for a while now (ever since Marty started a game of it during a previous visit to Tim’s).

This is a game of digging for treasure. The map contains cities (London, Moscow, …) and archaeological digs. The game lasts for a certain number of years and the week is the unit of time in this game. You can move from location to location, but it costs one week for each leg of your journey. There are four cards on display that can be taken by travelling to the city on the card and waiting the time specified on the card. These cards can give you specialized knowledge about one archaeological site, generalized knowledge about all sites, shovels (get extra cards during a dig), assistants (get extra general knowledge), and other special abilities. The main goal of this game is to dig for cards. Each site has 12 treasure cards in a deck with 16 blank cards and 2 knowledge cards. When you dig for cards you consult a table where you look up your knowledge about the site and decide how many weeks you want in return for a certain number of cards. For example, a knowledge level of 6 will give you the following cards for the corresponding weeks (1:1 2:2 3:4 4:6 5:9 6:12). You can only dig at any given site once per year (baring a special card, of course). You shuffle the deck and draw the cards. Any treasure cards that you turn up you can keep for victory points.

Also, exhibition cards can be turned up during the corse of game play. When one of these cards are revealed, an exihibition will be announced to take place at a certain city during a certain week of the year. Only specified treasures from dig sites will be shown. Anyone who is in the city at the time can play. The number of cards plus a dice roll will determine who keeps the exihibition card which will give victory points at the end of the game.

When the game is over, a final test is performed. For each of the five sites, whoever has the most knowledge will get 4 points. Also, whoever has the strongest knowledge in their weakest area will get 7 points.

This was an interesting game and one that I would be willing to play again. Too bad it is so hard to come by. Adam was the unluckiest one during the game. In 18 cards that he dug up, only 4 were treasure cards. Consequently, he lost the game. I got second place and Jon first. I was really worried about Robert. He collected 7 Congress cards which gave him 28 victory points (via a triangle scoring). But I was able to beat him out since he did not collect that many treasure cards.

I came home and found that my package has arrived! Boulder games sent out a note saying that they had Antiquity in stock. It was expensive but worth it. Especially considering that Boulder was offering some coupons that would bring the price down a bit. Yeah, Splotter will eventually reprint it. But who knows how long it will take (and it will be just as expensive).

So I now have more meaty games (Antiquity, Age of Steam), light-weight but still meaty games (Elasund; Alexandros; Hey, thats my fish), and pure fluff games (Dancing dice).

Update:
Finally unpacked, sorted, counted, and stored the Antiquity game. 1/2″ x 1/2″ tokens of: 473 Pollution, 48 Stone, 48 Gold, 48 Fish, 48 Sheep, 48 Wine, 48 Olives, 48 Shells, 45 Perls, 47 Wheat, 48 Wood. 160 Grass hex tiles. 80 Graves, 12 City maps, 16 Map tiles. 1 for each player of: 20 Houses, 16 Inns, 4 Cities, 22 Cubes, 1 Stables, Dump, Harbour, Market, Hospital, Granery, Cathedral, Explorer, Forced Labour, Brewery, Alchemy, Philosophy, Biology, Univeristy.

Sesh!

During this Memorial day weekend, I could have had seven days of gaming. From Wednesday to Tuesday and in five different locations. We should have called it Memorial-con. Not that I am going to everyone of these events, mind you. But it is a cool thing…

This holiday is actually about honoring our troops. So keep that in mind when you are out there enjoying gaming!

Tichu

Adam and Mike came early. And when Jon showed up, we opened up the Tichu deck to play a couple of hands while everyone else showed up. For the first two hands, I had pretty good cards. I called and made Tichu both times. For the third, and final hand, Adam calls Tichu. Then Mike over calls Tichu. I cringe. Mike did have a Queen bomb, but Adam had a 9 bomb, the Dragon, the Phoenix, an Ace, and other cards. Adam also went out first. Sigh. I must work with Mike about over calling Tichu…

Indonesia

We broke up into two four player tables and Indonesia was on our table. I was very happy to play it again. After explaining the rules to Mike, it took us about two and a half hours to play. There was a little bit of Ashly-Rollmaning going on (and Hamzying) mainly during the Merger phase. Bidding seemed to require the most thought in this game. What was annoying was the constant queries about how much money everyone had. And unfortunately, I let it get to me. Perhaps if everyone wrote out their current total on a sheet of paper, it would speed up the game (maybe make large L.E.D. displays).

Anyways, it was still fun to play. Especially since I ending up in first by a narrow margin (it was a tight game). I will leave you with a picture of Mike Ashley-Rollmaning…