Monday Session Report

Monday is back! Even without BSG being present, we had ten people last night, including new member Fred. My games played:

Rebel vs. Imperium
Played three games of the Race expansion without using takeover powers. Took two seconds and a third (typical for me; always a bridesmaid in this game). I found that the new powers were tempting me to over-Explore when I should have been Producing, especially with the Uplift 6-development out. Goals are much more interesting with choice of homeworld.

The Resistance
Werewolf-ish game where just over half of the players are Rebel Alliance trying to blow up Imperial bases, and the rest are Imperial Spies trying to sabotage the Rebel Scum. The first player must select "planners", and the selection must pass a vote. Each planner then secretly throws in an Alliance or Empire card. All Alliance cards, Imperial base blows up. Any Empire card, Alliance base blows up. First team to blow up three bases wins. Two other twists: the Imperial players know who each other are, and the Rebels must add one extra planner after each success, so by the end they must know who everyone is. The analysis was pretty simplistic with six players, with only a couple of clever moves, but it might be more entertaining with more (there's a seven-player forum game on BGG that might come to blows soon).

Are You The Traitor?
This game, however, is totally unsalvageable. Apparently someone thought Werewolf had far too much information for a proper party game. Each player has a role, some information, and a target; point to your target and your team wins, fail and you lose. But since no one with information knows who is on their team, and no one who needs information has a reasonable way of getting it, the game devolves into a staring contest. It doesn't help that every round, someone called me out as evil, and I always was.

Tichu
I love trick-taking games and "climbing" card games, and I so want to love this one, but too often I feel like a spectator as the hand plays itself out. My passes are usually obvious (if lots of pairs, give away singletons; if few pairs, break them up and hope for long run; low odd left). When I go out early, and replay the hand in my head afterwards, I often see that I could've played it a dozen different ways and still gone out first. I frequently don't get a card in edgewise until one or two people are out. I don't think I missed any Tichus, since I only went out first twice, and both required generous single-card leads from others. I so want to make a clever play in this game, but I'm nearly 40 hands in and have never found one.

So Race wins the evening, I guess, though it's been so long since I attended on Mondays that I even enjoyed Are You a Traitor, and would've played almost anything. Almost.

Brian has a thread on his blog about games you're looking forward to for the next year. For a long time, my list was blank, but Fantasy Flight and Games Workshop have decided to torture me:

BSG: Pegasus
Blood Bowl (for XBox in September)
Chaos in the Old World
Warhammer: Invasion (Living Card Game, starting from the ground up, unlike Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu, which had CCG predecessors; I'll only buy in if I think someone else might be interested)

And the biggie, if the rumors are true: Space Hulk. (And did you hear the other rumor? Prepainted figures?)