Gaming Results

Game night suffered from the attack of summer plans tonight, as only Dan, Lee, and I were able to make it. Scott wanted to watch the NBA Finals, Rakesh and Amandar were in England, Peter and Jessica had a friend in town, Karla had a toothache, and Jamie said he "cun't make ut."

So we played one short game and then a longer, Risk-like game called Attack! that Dan bought on his birthday.

China

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Dan	68	1
Mike	54	2
Lee	51	3

Notes: Lee seems to like this game, and proposed it to be our "pre-Attack!" game.

It wasn't much of a game, really. Dan cleaned our clocks when he expanded a road to size 16 - Lee and I didn't get one any bigger than 5. He also had a nice collection of ambassadors, and as his fort was in the biggest territory, he also got the most points from that.

It all happened because Lee made a move into my niche of the board and I defended myself. We both let Dan be for about a turn too long, and Dan took advantage, creating an insurmountable lead that didn't look too bad until we did the final scoring.

Attack!

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Mike	13	1	*
Dan	12	2	*
Lee	11	3	*

Notes: We then played Dan's game of Attack! for the rest of the night. This is a war game on the premise of Risk, but with a few bells and whistles added. For one, you can build a navy. This allows you to transport troops freely across the oceans. Also, there are different units (instead of the One, Two, Three armies). This allows you to mix and match your armies up. Also, the dice are different - if you match your units with the dice, you take out the other guy. Also, the defender always rolls first, so an attacker generally wants several more units that the defending area.

Anyway, we set up our units in differnt areas. I claimed South America, but threatened Dan in Quebec and Lee in Central Africa. Lee had lots of units in Europe and a few in Saudi Arabia. Dan had a solid group in America and was threatening Lee in Great Britian and me in Panama.

Lee had a huge production advantage right away. His economics cards were awesome, and he soon had a set (once you get a collection of Minerals-Oil-Rails-Factory) you can double that set's production. He advance quickly and wiped Dan out of Great Britain before making a move towards Africa, where I was slowly expanding.

Dan was also slowly expanding and had really bad cards. He would draw Population cards (1 production) while Lee was getting 3 or 4 Oil cards. Lee also took a good card from Dan when he captured Great Britain.

After Dan was wiped out, he sat there grumpily using Diplomatic expansions into the Western USA. These are odd plays. You try to persuade a neighboring region to join you. If you roll an 8, you get the region and a production card. If you fail, the other players can have it (usually by rolling a 9). If no one rolls high enough, the turn is wasted (as you only get three actions a turn, failure can mess with your turn). What would typically happen is the Player trying the diplomatic blitz would get the region or one of the other two players would. Then the Active Player would attack that region (which would be defended by a pitiful single unit), and take the region anyway.

The reason we did it that way is because when you march into a neutral region its defenses are much tougher. What would cost a player several units would usually result in losing one or none if he attacked it after another player won his diplomatic blitz. I found this a weakspot in the game that we somewhat mitigated by having the player who just gained and lost a Diplomatic Blitz region could forfeit the card he temporarily gained. Thus, it wouldn't hurt you if you got a stupid Population card from it to risk losing a Rails 4 on a blind draw.

Anyway, I was spread all over the map and controlled the seas. Lee was making a lot of units, but he started squandering them by attacking regions instead of diplomatic blitzing them. Then Lee expanded into Africa, took Algeria and knocked me out of West Africa. I reloaded my units, then took back West Africa while Lee was worrying about Dan's unit-hoarding and slow expansion in America.

Then Lee took the navy from me, and rather than let him march into Africa from Europe, I re-took it on some lucky rolling. Lee then made the move of the game. Rather than Diplomatically blitzing Libya or stockpiling his units and then attacking Libya or my moderate West African force, he attacked Libya with moderate force. He lost all his units and I quickly pounced and took Algeria. I now had a foray into all of Southern Europe, as the Mediterranean Sea allows transportation across it between Africa and Europe.

It was at this point that Dan pounced. I had a decent frontline in West Africa, but my units in South America were spread all over, and Dan amassed a ton of units on Panama and broke our truce. He bunched through Venezuela and took my Home Base of Amazonia on one turn, taking my 10 units of production. I was kind of pissed, but should have known better.

Still, there was one turn remaining for me. Dan had amassed 12 regions, and Lee expanded into two more regions to bring his total up to 13. Though my forces were scattered (except for Algeria), I had control of 11 regions (I had peaked at around 14). Dan was at his most powerful, and Lee had had his day in the sun.

Fortunately, Lee left two regions incredibly weak - France and Italy, each with one infantry unit. I took them easily and claimed victory, as it was now just about 10:30 and he had already agreed to stop at 10. I could have tried to punch through Dan's lines and attack his post of units in New England, which had been weakened by a strategic move down to Panama.