Germantown 03/31/14 - OUTER SPACE

Attendance:  19

• Leslie Barkley
• Paul Czarnota
• Dave, Andrew & Corwin Fair
• Nick Ferris
• Henry Ho
• Randy Hoffman
• Rebecca Holte
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob & Carol Jones
• Sarah Pimsler
• Eric & Laura Reinhold
• Gordon Rotter
• Arne Schwettmann
• Alf & Cynthia Shupe

In anticipation of this, the fifth Monday of the month, we decided we would start having theme nights on every fifth Monday. For this inaugural session, we went with OUTER SPACE! All games (except Qwixx, which we played A LOT) had an outer space theme.

Games Played (scores in order of place):

Space Beans - Dave 34, Corwin 33, Laura 30, Eric 27, Bob 27, Rebecca 25
Race For the Galaxy - Leslie 40, Gordon 26, Cynthia 21
Race For the Galaxy - Eric 32, Gordon 30, Paul 27
Battle Beyond Space - Dave 26, Laura 22, Cynthia 15
Continuum - Leslie 72, Bob 65, Rebecca 60, Corwin 56
Merchants of Venus - Henry 1676, Randy 1612, Alf 1105
Qwixx - Gordon 69, Dave 65, Paul 44
Qwixx - Paul 109, Dave 85, Henry 85, Gordon 74
Qwixx - Dave 89, Randy 72, Paul 62, Henry 56
Qwixx - Paul 67, Randy 59, Dave 49, Henry 47
Qwixx - Randy 116 Henry 61, Paul 46
Cosmic Wimpout - Bob 305, Leslie 210, Corwin 205
Cosmic Wimpout - Leslie 405, Corwin 385, Bob 0
Battlestar Galactica (with expansions) - Carol, Doug, Nick, Sarah, Andrew won as human. Arne lost as Cylon.
Qwixx - Paul 68, Randy 63, Henry 62, Leslie 41
Qwixx - Henry 59, Leslie 59, Paul 27, Randy 22

Battle Beyond Space image by a_traveler on BGG.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - The Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel by Stefan Feld

Our fifteenth game was the one with the longest name in the series, The Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel, based on the popular fantasy novel by Ken Follett. You can see in the picture below that the box is thicker than most of the others in the series, although the added depth doesn't seem necessary. There's also a full size, 2-4 player, The Pillars of the Earth game that we've played at GCOM Germantown and it's really good, although completely different.  

In Builders Duel, one of the players builds a cathedral while the other builds a fortress. Each building consists of three sections, each of which requires three processed resources to build. During the game, players collect raw materials such as sand, sheep, stone and wood, process them into finished goods, and then add them to their building. The first player to complete his or her building wins.

Bob's Fortress

Actions are assigned through an interesting mechanic. Each turn, nine action cards are laid out in three rows. The start player places his three markers on each card in a column, each card in a row, or diagonally. The other player then has to place his markers the same way, but must overlap exactly one card with the first player. The players then have an "auction" of sorts using seals to see who gets the card they both chose. Once that's done, both players take the actions on their cards.

The seals are double-sided coins, a personal one you keep permanently and neutral seals you collect and spend throughout the game. Values on your personal seal are 2 on one side and 3 on the other, while the neutral seals are 0/5, 1/4, and 2/3. During the auction, the first player takes a seal of his choice and flips it (yes, flips it in the air like a coin) to determine his bid. The other player then contributes as many seals as he wants, flipping them in turn, until he passes the value of the first player. At that point, the first player can contribute more seals until he retakes the lead, going back and forth until there's a winner. Once you use your personal seal, you may contribute no more. All neutral seals used are discarded after the auction.

The auction is interesting because you can go for a big score and use the 0/5 seal if you have it, but you may flip the 0 side, while the personal seals offer a guaranteed 2 or 3 value, but you can then add no more. Of course, if you spend all your neutral seals, you're vulnerable in future auctions until you can acquire more, so you need to choose your battles carefully.

The action cards get you raw materials, allow you to process raw materials into finished goods, buy neutral seals, allow you to sell wool in order to get more coins, switch the start player, etc. Once a player has completed his actions, he may apply processed goods to his building at a cost of 2 coins for one, 6 for two and 12 to build an entire section of three. Additionally, the first player to build a particular section gets a bonus of coins, seals or a free resource conversion.

The game ends when a player has completed his building or when four passages of three rounds each are completed. The player who completed his building first, or whoever has the most complete building if neither is done, wins.

Carol's Cathedral

I started out with an early lead after Carol spent all her seals, allowing me to win the extra card for a couple of rounds in a row. Hilariously, both of us frequently forgot the build phase of the turn which meant we missed a couple of opportunities to add to our building. Near the end, Carol caught up and going into the final turn both of us were within striking distance of finishing our building.

During the final turn, the game came down to one final card we both needed to win. The auction was close and would be determined by one final flip of the coin; whoever won the toss would be first to complete their building.

I won the toss, finished my fortress and won the game. It wasn't entirely satisfying winning like that, but it sure was exciting.

After four losses in a row, Bob wins Builders Duel.

Coming up:  Mythological creatures race at the behest of a god in Odin's Ravens.

Germantown 03/17/14

Attendance:  18

• Gabriel Copley
• Dave, Noreen, Andrew & Corwin Fair
• Nick Ferris
• Jenn Glinzak
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob & Carol Jones
• Sarah Pimsler
• Eric & Laura Reinhold
• Rebecca & Gordon Rotter
• Arne Schwettmann
• Alf & Cynthia Shupe

Welcome, Jenn!

Games Played (scores in order of place):

Machi Koro - Dave, Andrew, Jenn, Nick
Blokus Duo - Sarah 11, Arne 16
Medici - Carol 94, Randy 84, Laura 81, Noreen 78, Bob 75, Eric 67
8 Minute Empire - Nick 40, Dave 38, Andrew 26, Jenn 24
8 Minute Empire - Dave 16, Andrew 11, Nick 11, Jenn 10

Qwixx - Sarah 89, Bob 73, Noreen 46, Arne 20

Big Points - Eric 39, Laura 24, Carol 24, Randy 20
Shadows Over Camelot - Alf won as the traitor, Cynthia, Rebecca, Gordon, Doug, Gabriel
Black Spy - Sarah 19, Carol 25, Arne 43, Randy 44, Noreen 89, Bob 100
Ghost Party - Arne -14, Sarah -14, Carol -18, Randy -19, Noreen -20, Bob -28
Bruges - Nick 63, Dave 52, Andrew 49, Jenn 39

Ghost Party image by Jonan Jello on BGG.

Posted by Bob on 04/05/14.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - Tally Ho! by Rudi Hoffmann

Next up was a serious step back in complexity, Tally Ho! by Rudi Hoffmann. This was a new acquisition since we started this series.

In Tally Ho!, one player plays the humans, composed of the Hunters and the Lumberjacks, while the other player plays the Foxes and the Bears. The object is to hunt the other player's tiles. Stuck in the middle are the innocent ducks, and pheasants, which are hunted by all.

The board is a big grid with 49 spaces. The tiles are placed face down at the start of the game and the players take turns turning them face up, being careful not to change their orientation. Alternatively, rather than turn a tile face up, a player can move one of his own already face up tiles or move one of the neutral duck and pheasant tiles. Bears and Lumberjacks only move one space in a turn while all other tiles can move any amount through empty spaces.

Each of a player's tiles has a specific "prey" it can attack by moving onto its space. The Fox can eat the ducks and pheasants for two and three points, respectively. The Lumberjack can chop down one tree for two points. The Bears can eat a Hunter or a Lumberjack for five points each. The Hunter can shoot any of the animals, the Fox worth five points and the Bear worth the most at ten. The Hunter, however, may only attack in the direction his gun is pointing and can't turn during the game (which is why you can't change the orientation of the tiles when turning them over). You can have a whole bunch of Hunters face up, but if they're not pointing in the right direction you have problems.

Once the last tile is turned face up, each player gets five more turns. During these turns, players can move their own tiles off the board, scoring them. Players note the scores, switch sides and play another round.  Highest score after two rounds wins the game.

There is a good deal of luck in Tally Ho! due to the random distribution of tiles. But I like the tactical movement and the way you can use the ducks and pheasants to block the actions of the other player. The game feels a bit like chess in the way it plays, but is of course much easier and quicker.

During the first round I was the Hunter while Carol was the animals. Trees block movement, making it more difficult to move around the board, especially for the Hunter.  Turning up the Lumberjacks early helps the Hunter clear the trees and gain movement. Unfortunately, I didn't find my Lumberjacks until late in the game, giving Carol some advantage.

At the end of the first round, in addition to pheasants and ducks, I had killed one Bear and only cut down one tree for a score of 39. Carol had killed four of my Hunters and one Lumberjack.  She easily won the round 62 to 39.

Taking over the animals during the second round, I wailed on the ducks and pheasants with my Foxes but had trouble cornering Carol's Hunters. In the meantime, she had found her Lumberjacks and cut down a ton of trees, making movement easier. At the end of the round I had killed two Hunters and no Lumberjacks, while she had killed one of my Bears and cut down ten trees.

Final scores:

  Carol    62 + 73 =  135
  Bob      39 + 52 =   91

Coming up:  We build a medieval fortress and a cathedral in the unnecessarily long-named The Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - The Settlers of Catan Card Game by Klaus Teuber

The hugely successful board game The Settlers of Catan was the first Euro to make it big in America. Not surprisingly, one of its many iterations is a two player card game.

Our copy of this game is so old that we have the German version, purchased before the English version had been released. This, of course, presents some challenge as the event cards are all in German. A couple of translation sheets I created years ago made that a minor issue (and there are many more available on BGG).

The card game has most of the elements of the board game, with some clever additional mechanisms. Each player starts with two settlements surrounded by six resource tiles, one each of wool, brick, wood, ore, grain and gold. Each card has a different die face and after rolling a die at the start of your turn you receive the appropriate resource. Cleverly, to keep track of your resources, you rotate the tile, showing zero to three of that resource.

Two settlements and their surrounding resources

The first thing you do on your turn is roll two dice.  One gives you resources as above, the other causes an event, either drawing and using an event card, activating the thief, causing a comparison of knight or mill values, or giving each player a resource of their choice. Once that is resolved, a player can trade resources with the other player, build buildings in his settlements and cities, play special action cards, add roads which then lead to building new settlements (with new resource tiles), or upgrade a settlement to a city. All of these actions cost resources but may add additional resources or victory points to your principality. Settlements are worth one victory point, cities worth two, and a variety of buildings also add points as well as give you special powers. The player with the most knight points (from played knight cards) or mill points (from some buildings) captures the appropriate wooden block, each of which is also worth a victory point. The first player to twelve points wins.

It's been a long time since I've played this game and I really enjoyed it. There are a wide variety of options each turn and building out your principality is fun. The game does take a huge amount of table space (compare it to Ingenious to see the true range of the Kosmos two player series). I focused on building harbors which gave me a discount in trading resources with the bank while Carol built buildings which doubled the production of some resource tiles. We both jockeyed for the two wooden blocks. Unfortunately, the game is a bit long. Carol and I played for over an hour the first night and had to pause the game while we were both at six points.

The end is near

We came back the next night and the rest of the game went surprisingly fast. Carol upgraded settlements to cities, played buildings with victory points and quickly reached eleven. I managed to wrest control of the knight and commerce blocks, reaching ten points, but it was too late. Carol built a new building with one victory point and won.

Final scores:

     Carol    12
     Bob      10

Coming up:  We go hunting for wabbits (actually bears and foxes) in Tally Ho!

Germantown 02/17/14

Attendance:  20

• Leslie Barkley
• Gabriel Copley
• Paul Czarnota
• Dave, Noreen, Andrew & Corwin Fair
• Nick Ferris
• Henry Ho
• Doug Hoylman
• Bob & Carol Jones
• Eric & Laura Reinhold
• Rebecca & Gordon Rotter
• Jason Ruvinsky
• Alf & Cynthia Shupe
• Howard Wagner

We started early due to the President's Day holiday.  Welcome, Jason Ruvinsky!

Games Played (scores in order of place):

Ave Caesar (2 races) - Noreen 8, Doug 7, Carol 6, Bob 5, Corwin 4, Nick 2
Russian Railroads - Paul 441, Dave 399, Andrew 295, Leslie 263
12 Days - Leslie 45, Paul 40, Dave 38, Andrew 27
Ingenious - Howard 8, Jason 7
Steam Park - Eric 101, Nick 83, Doug 76, Laura 68
Oasis - Henry 111, Bob 103, Corwin 58, Carol 51, Noreen 39
Australia - Jason 130, Eric 125, Leslie 120, Noreen 86
Taj Mahal - Howard 46, Laura 43, Bob 33, Nick 32
Small World - Gordon 98, Rebecca 87, Cynthia 79, Alf 74, Doug 62
Royal Turf - Howard 1850, Noreen 1150, Bob 1150, Corwin 1150, Nick 600, Leslie 550
Terra Mystica - Henry 123, Dave 121, Andrew 88, Carol 67, Paul 62

Steam Park image by Triple Threat on BGG.

Posted by Bob on 03/11/14.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - Jambo by Rudiger Dorn

A well-regarded and popular entry in the Kosmos two-player series, Jambo makes the players African merchants in pre-colonial days.

Each player starts with twenty pieces of gold, a market stall capable of holding six goods, and five cards in hand. The object is to get to sixty gold or more. Once a player ends their turn with sixty or more gold, the other player gets one final turn to catch or pass them. If they do, they win. If not, the player who triggered the end wins.

On your turn, you have five actions spread over two phases. The first phase is "draw cards". The card deck consists of market stall cards, ware cards, and people, animal and utility cards. Each time you draw a card it costs one action. Once drawn, you may keep the card or discard it. If you keep it, then you may draw no more this turn and you move into the second phase. If you discard the card, you may draw again or not. Since each draw costs an action, you may draw at most five cards and will only ever keep the last one you drew. After drawing, any remaining actions are used in phase two, "play cards". You may also convert two unused actions at the end of your turn into one gold.

The key to the game are the ware cards which picture either three or six of the goods that make up the market. If you want to buy goods, you play a ware card and pay the bank the smaller of two amounts on the card. Put the matching goods markers onto empty spaces on your market stall. If later you want to sell goods, you play a ware card and turn in the matching goods from your market stall, taking the higher amount of gold on the card in exchange. In this way you buy goods at a low price and later sell them at a higher price.

The three-space market stall cards in the deck cost a gold to play, but they allow you to store more goods, giving you more flexibility in making saleable combinations on the ware cards. There are only five of these cards in the deck, so they're hard to come by.

Bob's market stalls with three goods

The remaining cards (people, animals and utility) give the player either a one time special action or a permanent benefit. They give you things like free goods, extra gold, allow you to swap one type of goods for another, remove cards from your opponent's tableau, or draw more cards. Up to three utility cards stay in front of you and can be used once per turn (at a cost of one action).

Bob has 50 gold, two utility cards and one good in his market stalls.

As you might imagine, Jambo has a specific back and forth rhythm as players spend their gold to obtain wares and other benefits and then gain gold by selling wares. In Jambo it definitely takes money to make money.

Carol and I jockeyed back and forth a bit, slowly building up our gold supplies. I obtained a three-space market stall right away and then proceeded to draw the other four available market stalls and discard them, making Carol muddle through with just her original stall. We both arrived in the mid-40's at about the same time.

At that point, I was within striking distance of 60 gold. I thought Carol might not be so I sold some goods and made it to 61 gold, triggering the end game. Carol would have one final turn to get from around 42 gold to 61 or more to win. It turns out I had miscalculated. She had the right combination of cards in hand to sell enough wares to hit 61 and the game was hers. As an added kick, she used her final two actions to get one gold, making it absolutely clear that she had won.

Final scores:

     Carol   62
     Bob     61

Coming up:  The two player version of one of the most popular Euros of all time, The Settlers of Catan Card Game.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - Blue Moon by Reiner Knizia

Our eleventh game was a new acquisition, Blue Moon, the third Knizia game we've played, after Lost Cities and Ingenious. Blue Moon may seem very familiar as we often play its multi-player sequel game, Blue Moon City, at GCOM Germantown.

Blue Moon is a card game where players fight a series of battles, each turn playing one character card plus an optional booster card or support card to reach a certain combat value in either fire or earth. The other player must then play his own character, plus a booster or support, and match or beat that combat value. The players play back and forth this way until one player can't or won't play any more cards and retreats. Of course, many of the cards have special powers which allow for a wide variety of effects like removing enemy cards from the table, not having to meet the combat value, restricting the other player's actions, or drawing additional cards into your hand. Finding good combinations of cards is the strategic heart of the game.

The winner of the fight attracts from 1-3 dragons to their side of the table. Once one player's deck has completely run out, the player with dragons on their side of the table wins the battle and 1-4 crystals. The first player to five crystals wins the game.

The great thing about Blue Moon is the decks of cards. The game comes with two unique, 31 card decks, each representing one of the races of the world of Blue Moon, in this case, the Hoax and the Vulca. Each deck has strengths and weaknesses and plays out differently, but they're incredibly balanced. While the base game has only two decks, Fantasy Flight issued nine others. All are out of print and hard to find, but we liked the game so much I managed to locate several more and so we now have many decks to play.

During our first battle, I managed to overwhelm Carol completely, drawing all three dragons to my side of the board and then attracting one more, ending the battle immediately and scoring four crystals, just one away from victory.  We switched decks and Carol fought back, winning the second battle but only attracting one dragon. Switching decks again, she won another two crystals in that battle, making the score 4 to 3.

During the final round, Carol managed to dominate, not only taking the two dragons she needed to win, but taking all three and attracting a fourth for the full four crystals. I had won the first four crystals of the game but never scored again.

Final scores:

     Carol     7
     Bob       4

Coming up:  We experience an African marketplace in Jambo.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - Summary of the First 10

Here are the games we've played so far:

• Lost Cities
• Caesar & Cleopatra
• The Pyramids of the Jaguar
• Kahuna
• Ingenious
• The Reef
• Dragonheart
• Heave Ho
• Balloon Cup
• Hellas 

Of these games, we've played Lost Cities the most times previously, while Dragonheart was the first playing for both of us. I had played everything else on the list at least once, and most of them many times. In addition to Dragonheart, The Reef and Hellas were both new to Carol.

The most similar games on the list are Heave Ho and Balloon Cup, both of which involve playing number cards to the board to improve a player's total or hurt their opponent's total before a scoring is triggered.  The most unique is probably Hellas which has some elements of a very simple wargame. The game with the most beautiful artwork, in my opinion, is Caesar & Cleopatra, although you can see that they're all pretty great looking.

Caesar & Cleopatra

Hellas

Dragonheart

I'm most looking forward to playing Dragonheart again and I think Pyramids of the Jaguar is under-appreciated in gaming circles.  Carol says she's most interested in playing Dragonheart and The Reef again. I've enjoyed playing each of them, especially since it's been with Carol.

So now it's on to the next ten.

Coming up:  A recent purchase, Blue Moon, by my favorite designer, Reiner Knizia.

Kosmos Two Player Game Series - Hellas by Franz-Benno Delonge.

As far as I'm aware (and I'm too lazy to double-check), Hellas is the only one of the Kosmos two-player games akin to a (very simplified) miniatures wargame, as each player controls a group of cute little Greek Soldier and Ship pieces and the players fight for control of cities.

The first person to control ten cities wins the game.

So how do you play? The two players start by building the board. Going in turn, each player picks a tile and places it either adjacent to the base Dolphin tile or next to two previously played tiles. Each tile depicts water, land and one city. Water must touch water and land must touch land, so there are some restrictions on proper placement. On each tile you place, you drop one of your Greeks and one of your ships. There are also three decks of God cards, each giving you benefits in a particular aspect of the game. You start the game with one card from each deck. Once each player has placed four tiles, the game begins.

On your turn, you have three options. Option 1 is "Burst of Strength" where you get three actions (or four if your tiles have more Temples than the other player) in any combination. Actions are either playing a Greek or Ship to the board or drawing a God card.

Option 2 is "Voyage" by drawing a new tile, placing it according to the rules above, spending an adjacent ship to pay for it, and placing a Greek on it to claim ownership. This allows you to expand your empire.

Finally, you can "Attack" one of your opponent's cities  from adjacent tiles over either land or sea. If attacking by land, you need only surround the city with an equal number of Greeks to wipe out the defenders and move your guys in, substituting any ships there with yours. If attacking by sea, you have to have one more Greek than the defenders. Either way, the loser is wiped out.

Carol attacks!

During all of this, God cards can be played to affect the outcome of your actions. Some let you Voyage or Attack twice in a row, some allow you to attack an enemy city with fewer Greeks or throw your ships into the battle to support your troops, some allow your Greeks to retreat rather than be destroyed in a battle and some cancel God cards played by the other player.

When we started, the first thing I did was beef up my cities and fleets using the "Burst of Strength" action. Carol followed suit and so we quickly developed equal defensive zones. Then we both "Voyaged" for a couple of turns to discover new cities.

At the point where we started attacking each other, the God cards started coming into play.  Faced with a stalemate, God cards can quickly turn the balance of a battle one way or another. Unfortunately, because of the large number of Greeks we had in the area, as soon as a city would change hands, the other player would attack and retake it.  We went back and forth for several turns, each of us losing gobs of Greeks and winnowing down our forces.

Finally, Carol took control of nine cities and was poised to win. Unfortunately for her, I had a stronger hand of God cards and was able to attack two of her cities in one turn, going from 8 to 10 cities and winning the game. We both underutilized the God cards, which are clearly the key to winning the game. I realized that a little earlier than Carol and so was more prepared.

End of game

Final scores:

     Bob      10
     Carol     7

Coming up:  A summary of the first ten games! Then, we become African merchants in Jambo.