Games I Don't Quite Get -- 6/19 Session Report

I took off work early on Monday, watched Spain spank Tunisia with three goals in under twenty minutes, and then hurried over the Dragon's Lair to find Brian and Michael playing Roma. My guess is that some dice were rolled, one of about 864 card types was drawn from the discard pile, and somebody won. Meanwhile Jonathan arrived, so we broke out the attention-getter...

Polarity
A dexterity game crossed with an area control game, with wicked leaning magnets. Jon is much better at placement than me, even getting a double at one point (a leaner on another leaner), but a few too many conversions and conservative play by him allowed me to run out of discs first and nip the 5-4 win.

Acquire
Figuring we had just over an hour before Ted and/or Simon arrived, the four of us decided to give this a shot. I've always preferred to call this game "Sellout" rather than "Acquire", since it seems like your goal is to be bought many times over. Brian took a commanding early lead by founding five (!?!) of the seven companies. I thought I was making an excellent comeback, though -- I was the majority holder in the first and third merger, and shortly after the third merger I was majority shareholder in the two large, safe companies. There was only one other company (one of the middle-value ones) that could grow past the safe point, and try as I might I couldn't merge it into one of the big ones. Meanwhile Brian and Jon managed to merge one baby company after another into it, cashing in over and over again. In the end that cash on hand was too much -- Brian finished with $54,000, Jon with $34,000, me with $30,000, and Michael (cut out of nearly every early merger) somewhere south of $20k. Not that I've played that much Acquire, but I think this is the first time I've seen tile play take on such importance, as opposed to buying into the right companies at the right times.

Saboteur
Still no new players, so we stalled with a short filler game. Players build tunnels towards a hidden gold mine, with (maybe) one secret saboteur trying to hold them up. This game seems very group-dependent to me; if people are really determined to be the first one to the gold, then and only then does the saboteur have some chance. But even then, the scoring mechanism makes the winner a coin flip. Bleh. Jon won the first two rounds for a vast chasm of winning.

Age of Steam
Ted arrives, and giving up on Simon we pull out the meaty game of the evening. The starting goods are an almost perfect mismatch for the nearby cities, so I pay a ton to get the first Urbanization and set up what appears to be a solid starting position. Unfortunately I forgot the first rule of AoS/Railroad Tycoon: the way to win is to build where nobody else is. On the first turn Brian builds two links at one end of my route, then on the second turn bids high and builds on the other end. Game over for me, though I managed not-last solely by keeping my shares and locomotive size low and making 2-link deliveries all game. Brian was the runaway winner, which is my main problem with this game -- while I like the idea of it, all four of my plays have (a) gone over 2 hours (last night was the shortest at 2:15; the longest was 3:30), and (b) had an obvious winner before the end of the first hour. I was that winner once, too, so it's not sour grapes; I just don't like playing a decided game for over an hour and a half. Note that my one playing of Railroad Tycoon was much tighter, though I couldn't tell you why.

Ricochet Robots
This is what passes for "light end-of-session filler" in this crew. I played horribly, and for once was saved by the tiebreaker rule that I still so strongly dislike (see, here is a game where a runaway leader is not a problem, because the game is only 20 minutes long -- start another!). Michael and Jon were quickest on the draw, but Michael's fast calls came too early, leaving Jon with the 5-4-4-3-1 win.

I'll be in Boston next week, but I'm looking forward to a monster day of gaming on July 3rd!