Madison Board Gamers
Session Report, August 28, 2002

Games on the table:

Daytona 500, Battle of the Bands, Pizzaro & Co., Settlers of Catan, Africa, San Marco, 
Clash of the Gladiators, Get the Goods, Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, Nexus, 
Cube Farm, The Very Clever Pipe Game, and Agora.

Players:

Everett, John, Mike, Matt, Sarah, Joel, Tim, Bill, and Josiah.

Original comments by Everett, with some additional comments by Bill.


Daytona 500: Everett, John, Mike, Bill and Josiah.

      This is one I had asked John to bring as it was the highest ranked game on the 
Internet Top 100 that I hadnít played yet.  In fact, nobody at the table had played it 
before.  There was some resistance to this game because of the NASCAR theme, but I 
was able to convince people to give it a try.  
      We had five people, and even though it was listed as max. four players, I had 
recalled reading a comment on Boardgamegeek that it worked fine with five, so we 
decided to give it a try.   However, we did encounter two problems with having five 
players.  First of all, we ended up with a card left over.  Since none of us had played the 
game before, we were not sure if we needed all the cards in order to make sure that cars 
finished the race, so we decided to auction this card off with the racing cars.  Our other 
problem was that when it came down to the last two cars left to auction off, we had two 
players who did not have cars yet.  This gave us the dilemma of either banning everyone 
else from participating in these two auctions, therefore letting those two players have 
their cars very cheaply, or if we did let people who already had cars bid, then they could 
raise up the price as high as they could, knowing that the last people would have to beat 
their bid or go without a car.  We decided to let everyone continue bidding, so the last 
person had to pay the most just to have a car in the race.   In hindsight, I think five 
players would still work if we limited it to a maximum of 1 car for each player.  
      Once we got through those problems, the rest of the game went pretty well.  We 
picked up fairly quickly how to block other cars and how to set ourselves up for the free 
drafting space. The lead changed several times with nobody becoming the obvious 
winner, and only yellow (John) trailing most of the race.  In the end, John obtained the 
kingmaker position where there were enough cars close to the finish line that no matter 
which card he played, one of the cars would cross the finish line, but not his.  Johnís best 
card for his car ended up giving Bill the win.
      With the problems we had with the auction, and the dislike of the theme, not 
enough people wanted to continue with the other two rounds, so we gave up on it.  
Except for the problems we had for trying to fit five people into the game, I found it to be 
an interesting game and definitely want to try it again with four players and playing three 
rounds.

Bill's comments - Everett’s comments are pretty thorough.  All my cards moved the blue 
card forward, and I got the blue car fairly cheaply, so that was an 
edge for me, and I also picked up the extra card (which also would 
advance blue).  I got fairly hosed on the crowded turns, but it was 
made up for by my hand.  All in all a fairly decent game, although I 
wouldn’t call it top 100 material.

Clash of the Gladiators:  Joel, Sarah, and Matt

	This was going on at the other table while I was playing Daytona, and I didnít pay 
much attention to how it went or who won.  

LibertÈ:  Everett, John, Mike, Josiah, and Bill
	
      This was another new game for everybody.  I really like most of the Warfrog 
games, but even though the rules are actually fairly simple once you learn them, the way 
they are written seems incredibly muddy to me.  Definitely games where you need to 
make your own cheat sheets, which I did before the game.  The first round went solidly to 
the moderates, with Bill, Mike, and myself vying for control of them.  So much so that 
Josiah and John dropped out of the election part and started planning the next turn. I 
ended up controlling the moderates and getting the 5 victory points.  In the 2nd turn, the 
radicals took over, with both Josiah and John supporting them.  Bill continued to support 
blue in a loosing effort. Meanwhile Mike and I took to the battle field, but Mike was able 
to purge both of my generals to take the battle.  In the election, the radicals were coming 
close to their landslide.  They had 16 votes, with one contested territory left.  Bill could 
have had his moderate stack win the tie by advancing one of his blue personalities, but 
since Tim had arrived and had been waiting to join a game for a while, Bill decided to let 
the radicals win in that territory, giving them the landslide victory for the sudden death 
ending.  John beat out Josiah for controlling the most red, and won the game.

Bill's comments - Any game with a Battle For France move in the title is automatically 
going to be great!  I started with a very strong showing of Blue that 
somehow Everett was able to beat out in year 1.  Year 2 went to Red, 
that didn’t phase me as much as Everett might have you believe- there 
were more points to be had in having the most Blue than in trying to 
get a piece of red, and Josiah and John were scraping over that and I 
didn’t particularly want to get involved.  I was in a fairly decent 
position for years 3 and 4 with the bonus point spaces and was 
planning on making a huge comeback, but I felt sorry for the game-less 
Tim, and chose not to stop the Radical instant-win.  There’s a lot of 
interesting things about this game- using your people correctly, 
deciding what to draw, and choosing which value of the French 
Revolution to support.  I say support Liberte!

San Marco:  Joel, Sarah, and Matt

	Again, this was the game going on at the other table while I was playing Liberte. I 
did not see the results of this game either.

San Marco and Liberte ended at the same time, so we now had 9 players, and ended up 
breaking into 3 games.

Pizzaro & Co.:  Mike, Everett, and John

	This is one of my favorites of the recent releases.  For me, it has just the right 
combination of luck, strategy, and length.  This was the first time I played it with fewer 
than 5 people.  The auctioning is much different when you know that you will get to 
place all 6 of your ships unless you let one of the auctions pass out. In the first round, I 
was able to get a monopoly on Columbus, and I was actually able to put the veto cards to 
good use and arrange for some profitable auctions in the future.  In the first round I put a 
Cook at the bottom, and made sure I was the only one with ships left when he came back 
around.   I forget exactly how I used them in the other rounds, but they both helped a lot.  
On the third round, Mike beat me out on Cook, and John had a lot of points from his 
investments in Magellan.  However, I ended up with the Pizarro extra victory points, and 
the benefit of scoring last.  I needed 17 points to beat John.  On three cards I drew exactly 
17 points, and squeaked out the win.

Battle of the Bands:  Bill, Josiah, and Tim

Bill's comments - This was a game I picked up at GenCon.  It’s very well-done, it has a 
Cheapass feel, and is higher quality than one sees in most Cheapass 
games (in both game and material).  I think it’s a hoot to play.  
Josiah and Tim didn’t seem to have as good as a time, because they 
didn’t understand all the tactics and were a little fuzzy on some of 
the rules, thus sweeping me to an empty win.  But it’s still a game I 
highly recommend.

The Very Clever Pipe Game:  Bill, Josiah, and Tim
(I think these three may have also played Agora, but Iím not sure)

Bill's comments - Allegedly unlike any other Pipe Game you’ve ever played.  Well if by 
that they mean it sucks horribly for 3 player, I guess they’re right.  
Take you’re standard pipe game where one matches different colored 
pipes, and tack on colored floors to support more players, and you’ve 
got the garbage that TVCPG is.  We found it nigh-impossible to score, 
I think the winner had either 2 or 3 points (and those points are 
bases on the length of your completed pipe/floor.  Maybe it’s not so 
bad for 2 people, but if you’ve got three, play something else.

	Umm . . ., more games played at a table I wasnít at and donít know the results of.  
(I would have done better on these, but I didnít know I was going to write a session 
report until after the evening was done.) All I know is that there was mutual agreement 
that The Very Clever Pipe Game was a horrible 3 player game.

Settlers of Catan: Sarah, Joel, and Matt

	These three played 2 games of settlers.  Iím not sure of the results of the first 
game, but Iím guessing it wasnít Joel as he complained about being terminally bad at this 
game.  I did get to watch a good amount of the second game.  Sarah dominated from 
early on, claiming half of the board for herself, and eventually gaining a settlement on 
every number except 2 and 12.  Matt took the card route, and easily mustered the largest 
army, but was able to do little else.  Joel was stuck for the entire game with nothing but 3 
measly settlements.  Sarah eventually took the win with the help of longest road.