Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
October 9th, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor

Games Played:
Condottiere, Samarkand, Gold Digger, We the People

Players:
Sara, Joel, Everett, David, John, Mark, Mike

I had a lot of purchased-but-never-played games piling up, so I brought many of those, hoping to get a chance to finally play a few. John brought several Sid Sackson games in tribute of the upcoming Sid Sackson game collection auction (over 10,000 games).

Condottiere:
1st game: Joel, Sara, Everett
2nd game: Joel, Sara, Everett
3rd game: Joel, Sara, Everett, John, David, and Mark

Joel, Sara, and myself were looking for a quick game to play while waiting for everyone else to arrive, and this became our first game of the evening. Indeed, this was the first time any of us had played Condottiere. It's basically a trick taking game, where winning a trick also wins you a city on the board, a map of Italy. Get three (or four, depending on the number of players) connected cities and you win. You start with 10 cards, and everyone re-draws cards when only one person has cards left. On subsequent rounds, you get 10 cards, plus 2 cards for each city you control. This brings me to my only complaint about the game: get a bad hand on the first round, then you don't win as many cities, then you don't get as many cards the next round, so you remain weaker. The converse is true as well: get a great first hand, win a lot of cities, you get more cards the next round and remain stronger than everyone else. This happened on our first game, I got a very strong hand, and Joel and Sara had weak hands. On the second round, I was drawing 16 cards compared to 12 and 10, and easily won the game. Our second game was much closer, and there were some good fights going on, and lasted 4 rounds. The six player games worked as well. Joel was really impressed with how well this game worked for three people. Overall, it got fairly high marks.

Winners: 1st game: Everett, 2nd game: Joel, 3rd game: Mark

Ratings: Joel 9, Mark 9, Sara 8, John 7, David 7, Everett 6

Samarkand: David, Everett, Sara, John/Mike

This was a fortunate intersection of new-to-us games and Sid Sackson games, so obviously this had to be played. Unfortunately, John forgot to bring any diapers for Eli and had to leave in the middle of the game. Fortunately, a new member arrived after we started, Mike, and he was able to take over for John. This is a game of moving around the board to collect sets, either by trading cards at Nomad spaces (which costs you a card), or buying cards at Oasis spaces (which costs you money), and then selling sets at City spaces. The larger the set you sell, the more money you get. Not a bad game, but nothing really that sets it apart, and hence this got middle-of-the-road ratings.

Scores: Everett $520, Mike 335, Sara 330, David 185

Ratings: David 6, Sara 6, Everett 5, Mike 4

We The People: Mark and Joel

I had brought this mostly just to return it to John, but Joel saw it and liked it so much last week that he had to play it again, so he taught it to Mark (who had played Hannibal before and the rules are fairly similar). Joel played the Americans, and got some very good cards on the first turn. He played the French Alliance card, and the card the eliminates the British Regulars bonus. Even with this early advantage, the Americans never won a battle, but that did not bother Joel much as his strategy was to avoid battles and to go for political control. They had to stop before the game was officially over, and are not entirely sure what the outcome would have been, but the Americans did have a large advantage at that time.

Scores: Joel 9 colonies, Mark 4

Ratings: Joel 9, Mark 8

Gold Digger: Sara, Mike, Everett

This was yet another game that nobody had played before, and since it's a Knizia game, illustrated by Kovalic, made by local publishers Out of the Box, we had to give this a try. Each player has three claim tokens, and a hand of three cards. In the center of the table you lay out 6 mines, each belonging to a different faction. The deck of cards consists of 5 characters from each faction, and gold cards worth 0 to 8 gold. On your turn you play one card and draw one card. You play gold cards below mines, with a limit of 5 per mine. The total value of the gold cards is the value of the mine at the end of the game. You play character cards above the mine that matches their faction. When you play a character card, you have the option of playing one of your claim tokens on that mine as well. At the end of the game, the value of each mine is divided evenly among the players who have tokens on that mine. The player with the highest score wins. It's a pretty simple game, with the only strategy being if you play a claim token too soon, your opponents will load up your mine with low value gold cards. However, it's quick and is an o.k. filler game. The ratings reflect the type of game it is, if we were comparing it to Settlers, or El Grande, or any meatier game, the ratings would be lower.

Scores: 1st game: Everett 16, Sara 15, Mike 10
2nd game: Mike 14, Sara 13, Everett 13

Ratings: Mike 5, Sara 5, Everett 5