Dagrim's Tales

Boards and Bits (american online retailer) had a nice package dealer on some Splotter games. So, I ordered Roads & Boats, and Indonesia (both on my to-get list) as well as Cannes, VOC, and Oraklos. The package came out to less than the normal retail for R&B and Indonesia.

Now, I just have to wait until Penguicon to pick them up.

Went to ironphoenix's place to game today. donnav was the only other person to show up, though apparently beable had made noises (posts?) about showing up, too. We played Clans, Aladdin's Dragons (in which I screwed up the finish, so allowing ironphoenix to win on tie break), two games of Igel Argern (which is far too much roll&move for me), and then got into the rules for Goa and then Santa Fe Rails both vetoed by donnav as too much to learn at that point, so finished off with Puerto Rico.

'Cause, by now, everyone expects me to write one, and they don't even exchange LJ ids, cause I'm just going to put it in my report.

In attendance for gaming were me, ironphoenix, donnav, ragnhildr, beable, and a bit later, ansfrid. Showing up later were Stef, John, and ironphoenix's S -- with a drive by hello from Jenny (my sister) and her partner Aaron.

We opened with a 3-player game of China for donnav, ragnhildr and me -- but after the first two plays, beable showed up... so I re-explained the rules, we got the first couple plays done... and ironphoenix showed up... so we re-explained the rules and started. beable won, with me in 2nd -- but it was a close finish for everyone.

We had just explained our 2nd game, Ra, when ansfrid showed up. He decided to spectate, so we didn't have to pull out another game. [edit] The top 3 were close this time -- ironphoenix in first, me 2nd and ragnhildr close for 3rd. [/edit]

beable had to leave shortly, so requested a short game. I pulled out Jungle Speed. :) To nobody's surprise, I took first. ironphoenix had 2nd.

beable left, and ansfrid joined us finally for our next game, Antike. I took a clear first, and ragnhildr was sitting in 2nd place. (I also discovered that I've been playing the 7-seas part of Antike wrong, and that the correct way is open to interpretation.) [edit] Game designer answered on BGG -- the simultaneous occupation interpretation is correct. [/edit]


Near the end of Antike, the 3 remaining people appeared, and the game actually finished shortly after 6pm -- well-timed for the start of the potluck portion of the evening.

After dinner, a discussion of games talked about luck vs skill and random elements, and I asserted that it was quite possible to construct a game with random elements, and yet no luck. After a minute, I realized I in fact owned 2 games that in fact had that property -- in particular Set and Ricochet Robots. We pulled out Ricochet Robots for our last game of the evening, and ironphoenix won (with 5) to a tie for 2nd place (4 each) between ragnhildr and me.

(Note: China is on loan from M in Michigan. He has it cause of eviljohn and Tanga.)

Spent today at ironphoenix's place playing in the first of his "long-game" days. The game of choice was 2038 -- one of the 18xx series, but set in the future. This one is all about being the nastiest and most effective capitalist bastard that you possibly can. We started with the inexperienced players arriving an hour early for a rules explanation, and then game start an hour later. We had 4 newbies (including me), and 2 experienced players -- I pulled out a fairly clear first (5500+ net worth) despite a major rules snafu (misexplained, not misunderstood) that would have affected my late game a fair bit, with the 2 experienced players both in the 4800-4600 range, and the rest below that. If it weren't on the order of 15 years out of print, I just might be looking to get a copy of this game. I'm definitely going to look at playing others in this series.

Gamed with ragnhildr, con_girl, and foms.

We played The Bridges of Shangri-la and El Grande.

I've played El Grande before, and knew I liked it. I think I also like Bridges, but I'm not really sure how to win, yet. I did, but I don't think I understand the game yet. But, it is a good game.

And, today was the last day of Cangames.

I dropped out of Battlelore, deciding I didn't want to spend more time playing a game I really wasn't interested in, and there were a couple interesting possibilities this morning. There was a Diplomacy game with 6 players already signed up that looked really tempting -- but gabriel_le's Afrika II game had only her signed up. As it was a pair of 2-player games (for 4 players), I joined that, so her game wouldn't be cancelled. Afrika II is a chit & hex game, and we only played a couple turns (a couple hours with all the learning), but it was her first introduction to that sort of game, and I think it went pretty well.

We then took a bit of a break from Cangames, and came home and relaxed a bit, and got some more food.

In the afternoon I played Antike, which I quite like (and ended up buying). For those for which this will mean anything, it plays like Civilisation-lite (not Civ the computer game). It is a Mediteranean game of expansion for resources for production for more expansion.

Since gabriel_le had finished her game, I wandered around a bit, and watched Clans being played. We then shopped a bit (when I bought Antike, and Modern Art which gabriel_le had quite liked). Then, wandering back from the Marketplace, I noticed that the Clans game had just finished. So I asked the person at the game if he'd mind playing again, and teaching it, since it looked like a good, quick filler game with a bit of depth to it, and I thought gabriel_le might like it. (Yes, I made her sit down and play, too.) She ended up winning. (In fact, she ended up winning a lot of stuff this weekend.)

After dinner at the Mee Xim, I wandered back to Cangames to find some pick-up games. (gabriel_le didn't.) I saw a couple looking at TransAmerica and talking about trying it, so I volunteered to sit down, teach and play with them. (TransAmerica is identical in game play to TransEuropa, just on a different map.) Then, I got taught most of the rules to Toxic Waste before the owner took the game away. Instead, another person there pulled out Taj Mahal, which is an enjoyable game of hand management and rivalry for a variety of different scoring pips in a series of rounds. An enjoyable game.

First evening at Cangames. I had signed up for Shogun, thinking it would be a chance to try the new Shogun that I had looked at purchasing. Turns out it was the old Shogun, that I had played a couple decades ago. I thought I owned it, too, but apparently not. Dunno who did, then.

gabriel_le had her first game (2pm) cancelled by GM no-show, and her 2nd game (Junta this evening) cancelled by no players, so she played Shogun, too.

Board games at my place, this Saturday (February 3rd) from noon to five (12h00-17h00). High on my list of want-to-play are Power Grid, Caylus, Amun Re, and Santiago.

RSVPs appreciated, so I know whether I'll actually have anyone to game with or not.

I volunteered to run Jungle Speed at Arisia -- officially from 9pm to 11pm on Friday evening. I ended up starting at 8pm, and closing up at about 12:20am. The game was popularly, generally have 5-8 players at any particular time, with different people rotating through, and several people asking me afterwards what the game was, where they could buy it, etc. All in all, I think it was a definite success. (And while there were a few injuries, nothing major.)

Yeah, it's a meme, and I generally try to avoid memes, but I think I'll go with this one.

gabriel_le and I are such geeks, we played not one, but two board-games on our New Year's Eve together. We tried Power Grid two player, giving me a chance to learn the game before teaching it to more people, but found that it is probably a better game with more. (It involves an auction, competition for resources, and jockeying for play order, all of which are more interesting with more than two people.) And, we played Iron Dragon, which is much faster and with less down-time when played with two people.