Well game day started off scary for me. I had asked Adam to show up earlier than usual because I knew IH-35 would be bad. However, when Adam showed up in my office soaking wet and describing the 2-inch golf-ball sized hail, I knew I was in trouble. You see, I baby my truck. Ok. I drive the snot out of it, but I keep it indoors in a garage whenever possible. So the thought of hail damage was one that I was not willing to consider. However, we looked on the weather sites and determined that the hail storm had just passed. Another one was coming in from the south-east but it had a ways to come. So I thought it was safe to drive the gap. Fortunately, no hail (or heavy rain) was spotted.
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Well, after getting games from Adam Spielt, we of course had to play them. And first up on the table was Mauer Bauer. This is another abstract game from Leo Colovini. And I like it. You are building towns on a triangular grid. And when a wall is placed that surrounds pieces on the board, everyone has the opportunity to play score cards. These score cards are based on a number of different conditions, like white towers or red houses inside or outside of completed areas. Two Grimms were playing and this was our first time, so it was a little slow. But I expect future playings to be quicker. This would be a good lunch time game and I definately liked it.
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Another new game and this one was by Andreas Seyfarth. This game was about completing routes (loosely described as mail routes but that theme is lightly applied). This game was also played slow. However, it did suffer from a couple of problems. First, you cannot plan ahead for your next move. This is because one of the actions a player can do is “clear the board”. So the chances of a city card that connects your next hop staying are slim. The next problem is that it is played like a multiplayer solitare game. There is not much interaction other than getting a better score chit for the section that you completed.
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The next new game was a completely abstract game (well, there was a theme about Druids but that was more distracting than thematic). And this new game was the worst of the bunch. Maybe we got some rule wrong (like that never happens). But my problem with it was that you have a limited number of initial moves (4). And this game requires that people cooperate in scoring sections. However, the lesser majority goes on the bottom of the score pile and consequently receives a smaller multiplier (ex: 4x 3x 2x 1x). So, Mike wants me to help complete a score (so you can get more points that allow you to score more sections). However, if I were to do it, I would receive the worst multiplier. So I didn’t. And tried going somewhere else.
We actually had to restart the game when we realized that we got a rule wrong but it still didnt provide any incentive for people at the worse end of the deal to complete the deal. I actually hope that me missed something major here.