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.