Saturday, April 26, 2008

Damascus 04/25/08

Got some catching up to do, as I want/need to post my GameDays report as well...

Fourteen hale and hardy gamers stepped out for a night of geekdom...

  • David & Noreen Fair
  • Rick & Linda Pasquale
  • Jason Cheng
  • Rose Byington
  • John-Paul Pizzica
  • Lance Jones
  • Paul H.
  • Nathaniel Klinger
  • Rich O'Brian
  • Luke Conte
  • Martha & David Briggs
I got four people playing Stone Age, and then we played Aquaretto. Aquaretto is a sequel to Zooloretto, and while it can be played with that game, this time we played it standalone... Nathaniel won with a huge "let the kids buy fish and feed our animals" strategy, scoring 44 points, followed by Rick with 26, Linda with 25, and David with 19.

Stone Age ended shortly thereafter. As predicted, the end game bonuses were big deciders. Paul won with 225 points, followed by Lance with 168, John-Paul with 160 and Jason with 140.

A group played just a single round of Saboteur as everyone tried to coordinate the next round of games...

The three-player Nordic Countries map is one of the tighter and more competitive maps for Ticket to Ride. Martha won the game tonight, 118 to David B.'s 106 and Linda's 96.

Power Grid is always a favorite, and tonight we played on the prototype Korea map. Rick managed to get ahead in capacity, stay behind in cites, then build first and throw down 5 cities to trigger a surprise game end and take the win. Final scores/positions: (Cities/Capacity/Money) Rick (14/12/14), Rich (11/11/47), Dave (10/10/74), John-Paul (9/9/55), Jason (8/6/130), Rose (7/7/87).

A group of us knocked down several games of Dominion (aka "Game X"), which I recorded on the "official" playtest sheets, but i failed to write them in the log, so no word on who won. i think the game was overall very well received.

Back-to-back Tichu? Unheard of? Not here... A shortened game was played between Martha & Noreen and David B. & Linda. They called it after 8 hands with the score all-but tied at 490-510. game 2 was Linda & Rose over Rick & Noreen 1100 to 700.

La Citta is a brain-burny classic, and four valiant city managers set off to play. Luke managed a win in a tight race, scoring 33 to Paul's 29, Nathaniel's 28, and Lance's 14.

The same four played a pair of games of something I had never heard of, a new game from Mayfair called Bacchus' Banquet. the gek entry holds little info, so I hope someone who played can leave some comments and let us know how you liked the game... In game 1, Luke won as Messalina, in game 2, Lance won as Caesonia.

We played Glory to Rome, a game where the artwork hides a really good game. Jason won with the Forum, so points were ignored. Had they been useful however, David had 18, John-Paul 9, Rich 8, and Jason 6.

A 3-player game of China is almost always a good thing. Nathaniel won this won, 45 to Paul's 41 and Lance's 27.

The last game of the night was a two-player contest of Thurn & Taxis with the All Roads Lead to Rome expansion. John-Paul won 34 to 27 over Jason.

Next session is Friday, May the 9th... Hope to see you there!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

"Bacchus' Banquet" is a cross between "Bang!" and "The Red Dragon Inn". Everyone is dealt random character cards face down; someone is always Caligula and this person turns his card face up. Each character has different goals. Some want to assassinate Caligula, some want to collect gift, others want to eat/drink specific food/drink combinations, etc. At the same time, each character wants to make sure he doesn't get incapacitated from eating/drinking too much.

On your turn, you choose three cards from a number of face up cards. These cards are the gifts, food and drink items, knives, etc. that the characters need to reach their goals. You keep one card for yourself (placed face down), discard one (secretly), and offer the third to another player (face down). Players can either accept or decline the offer. If you accept, you apply the card's effects to yourself. If you decline, you offer it to somone else. It's possible for the offered card to return back to you if no one accepts it; in this case, you then must apply the effects to yourself.

The game is a nice filler with some room for bluffing and strategic play.