Fun week of gaming with two live sessions and games at yucata.de
First live session was at the N-BGC game night and it began with three player Saint Petersburg. I got behind in workers which meant that I was short on money all the time. Positive side was that I got both Observatories and was able to find Aristocrats with them. All in all it was a tight game which I won by a margin of three or four points to third place. SP is a excellent game and I definitely willing to play more.
After SP we lost the third player and ended up playing three rounds of Schotten-Totten. I had played Battle Line before and had high expectations which weren’t quite met. Game mechanisms are simple in SchT and game plays fast. There’s also some decisions to be made but all in all I did not get invested in the game.
Last game of the N-BGC session was The City which had collected dust in my collection far too long unplayed. Aapo had played it before and with some figuring out we managed to get game going. The City is a card driven engine building game which reminded me of Race for the Galaxy. Big differens between the two is that The City is a quick game to play. My biggest problem with the game is that I’m not too fond of games of this type. There’s not much interaction and you have to cope with the cards you draw. Maybe it makes more sense with more plays?
Second game night of the week was a fun one because I had three good friends come by to play games. Our first game was The Hobbit Card Game which is a Martin Wallace trick taking game. The purchase point of the game for me was the trick taking mechanism but it typically doesn’t hurt that game is designed by Martin Wallace.
In THCS players play characters from the movie/book and form teams of good or evil. Our four player game meant that we had a team of three good characters and one evil one. The basic trick taking game is rather simple but there’s quite interesting scoring mechanism involved and obviously the team aspect is also interesting. We soon found out that game was really hard for the good guys and the two games we played ended both in the defeat of the ones who should have won.
Kings of Air and Steam was also fun and now we played a standard game of it. My role was pretty lame with only one extra depot in the starting setup of the game. There was also some serious AP i the beginning of the game when newbies tried to figure out how the game works. Pre planned actions are harsh for inexperienced players because mistakes are costly and players tried to avoid them using a lot of time in the planning phase. I still enjoyed the experience and had fun with the game.
Last game of the evening was Rainer Knizia’s Genial which I like quite a bit even though it does not hit the table that often nowadays. Genial is one of the best abstract out there even though I do think it’s not at its best with four players. I won the first game quite easily but in the second game I got smashed because everybody obviously played against the winner of the first game. Two player Genial is superb and it’s not bad with more players either.
Again a fun week of gaming and there’s some interesting news also bubbling under like the coming kickstarter for Gear & Piston which I’ve played as a prototype and liked quite a bit. You should check the game out!