August 1, 2006 |
Back to a decent Game Night, as RoboRally has been banished to 4 players or less land. Tonight's attendance was highlighted by Jim, Scott, and Brian, as Lee had a cold and Dan had a one-night too early going away dinner.
| Clans |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 49 | 1 | |
| Brian | 44 | 2 | * |
| Jim | 39 | 3 | * |
| Scott | 37 | 4 | * |
Notes: First, I brought out Clans, a game that's fairly short but high on strategy. I figured it would help make up for the utter chaos of last week's RoboRally.
I explained the rules and then gave a few quick explanations of strategy (#1, try to get into as many scorings as possible, #2, get the chips, etc.). They seemed to get the game pretty well.
Usually, I can pick up who's what color, but I only had Scott pegged. Near the end I exposed myself, but it was for a scoring attempt that locked up victory. Brian sort of accidentally managed second place.
| Clans |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 45 | 1 | |
| Brian | 38 | 2 | |
| Jim | 35 | 3 | |
| Scott | 31 | 4 | |
Notes: Now that everyone knew how to play, we tried again, and again I won. This time I exposed myself a wee bit earlier (perhaps on the 8th or 9th city instead of the 10th or 11th), but I still managed to hang on for the victory. This time I had figured out who everyone was and managed to keep Brian a bit further back. Scott had twice initiated groupings that eliminated people, so I had him pegged from about turn 2.
| Beowulf |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 33 | 1 | |
| Jim | 23 | 2 | * |
| Brian | 16 | 3 (Tie) | * |
| Scott | 16 | 3 (Tie) | * |
Notes: Beowulf is one of my favorite new games - it's one that the Madison Board Gamers showed me, and I had to purchase it. So I was the only fellow with any experience. It showed.
Jim had a very rough early going, missing a lot of risks and getting a few scratches. Scott and Brian spent a lot of cards early on, things they probably wouldn't do in subsequent playings. Like Taj Mahal, you only want to make an expensive stand when the auction is incredibly vital.
Scott was massing VPs left and right, but he was short on cards over the last several auctions and was tagged with the awful double wound when fighting the dragon. I managed to risk just enough in the last fight to get Jim to use his special sword he had won in the final gold auction. The loss of 4 cards cost him about 3 or 4 points in the final auction of the game.
In the end, Scott had 36 points, but had to lose 20 as he had four wounds(!). My conservative and semi-lucky game plan managed to work out pretty well, while Jim recovered nicely from some early bad luck, eventually using Gold auctions and VP chips to get rid of a couple wounds and get the +5 health bonus.
I think everyone liked it, and I still dig it.