Saturday Roll Call
I started off with Jon and Scott and the federally mandated game of Race. I'm pretty sure that Scott and my combined score beat Jon. Almost positive, in fact. After that Steve and Chris showed up for our US RDA of cylons. Humanity was looking good, so I figured I'd get dealt a cylon in the middle. Which, of course, happened. And (loyal president) Baltar quickly eliminated Boomer as a cylon, which meant I was practically forced to reveal. Anyway, Chris and I had back-to-back turns. Adama had been shot (good times) and boomer was brigged so we got a round or two of running roughshod on skill checks (including incoming nukes). Then the fleet showed up and we put on some boarders. Mainly for giggles. On the down side, humanity got the bonus point of distance which saved them a full jump. Still, wee managed to force the fleet to make a risky jump for the win, and they failed. It came down to a straight 50/50 shot, but both Chris and I had a decent chance to win on our turn, and almost any skill check would have been great.
I like our Roslin fix (and we need to make the Ambush super-crisis fix standard as well ... it only backs up the jump track one space).
After that we had newcomers Karl & Kathy, and Travis. After a caloric interlude, we split into Vinci and Through the Ages. [Actually, we started on Starcraft before Jon put on his Derek Lowe face and muttered something about "a lot of rules."] I must say that the 3rd editions "boards" (instead of card setup) are nice, although they still aren't clear about happiness. Anyway, after getting off to a slow start I Pillaged Karl and razed his two Cathedrals to the ground to make sure he didn't run away with it (and to show what is best in life). Then me and Captain Cook circumnavigated our way to a huge score.
The Vinci people will have to enlighten us on their day.
Anyway, thanks to all who attended. I still need to play Starcraft. Perhaps I'll read the rules again myself.
Labels: battlestar galactica, Race for the Galaxy, session report, Through the Ages
posted by Brian @ 9:26 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
And FYI -- you have until noon sunday to add to this math trade. A ton of interesting games (and even more crap!).
I'm bummed I missed out on what sounds like a great session. Vinci is something I've been staring at in my closet for a while. I'm working through the Starcraft expansion rules now, which seem to be solid game patch, though pushing the total rule-reading experience for the patched game to something around 70 pages. I'm perpetually up for playing Starcraft again, though.
In Vinci, Jon and I jumped out to the early lead. Steve's civilization started creating defensive forts everywhere, and even when he declined, his forts remained and made his civilization harder to wipe from the map. So hard, in fact, he never declined again and only played two civilizations the entire game. His second civ had astronomy and mining, which meant he could sail along the coastline and pick out mining territories far apart from each other but still connected by the sea. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these mining territories were hidden well behind other declined civs and inaccessible to his opponents.
Travis, meanwhile, started slowly and about halfway through the game was at least 20 points behind Steve and about 10 points behind Jon and I. But he also only played two civs and his declined civ remained tucked away from the rest of the action and kept earning him points. Meanwhile, his new civ swept the other end of the map, and his slow start made him seem so nonthreatening that Steve and Jon laughed when I defeated one of Travis' declined provinces because it looked like I was just piling on the loser. But Travis' score per turn grew exponentially and he was earning almost 20 points per turn at the end of the game and caught up to Steve while Jon and I were left in the dust with our 10-12 point turns. In the end, Steve crossed the 120 victory point finish line with 122 points if I remember correctly, and Travis ended close behind.
Interesting that Steve and Travis, who had never played Vinci, waxed Jon and I, who had. Funny that I also won Vinci the first time *I* played it. It's almost like the game wants newcomers to do well and like it so it gets played again...or maybe I'm just watching too much Battlestar Galactica and have paranoia, cunning and insidious manipulation on the mind.
I'm definitely watching too much BSG.
What? Crap in a math trade? never heard of such a thing.
Nice report.
I was able to finish Gears 1 yeaterday on wimpy Casual. Moving on to Gears 2 next week
Nice report. Sad I missed it.
Well you could add to the math trade. If BGG were working.
I had actually played Vinci once before, at Dennis' I believe. I believe that the only thing that kept me in, other than the "who wants to pick on the loser" defense, was the fact that my second civ allowed diplomacy, which I played as defensively as possible --there was only one player who could reach me for most of the end game and I tried to keep an alliance going. It was a lot of fun and I love the epic feel of a game that plays out in around two hours.
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