— Back to Session Reports
|
Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
December 30th, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor
Session 25
| Date/Location | 12/30/2002 Memorial Union |
|---|
| Session Length | 270 min. |
|---|
| Attendees | Todd Jensen, Everett Proctor, Joe Powers, Steve Mading, Joe King, Tim Achee, Vince Busenbark |
|---|
| Games Played | Odin's Ravens, Mexica, Evo, The Bucket King, Carcassonne, Gargon |
|---|
| Summary | Another Monday session because of the holidays. We were once again in Vilas Hall, in a classroom that had several poster board visual aids, evidently left over from a speech class last semester. Hopefully a freshman speech class, judging from the quality and theme of these visual aids, which included such subjects as "Rod Sizes Varies with Age", and "The Venus Project Storyboard". Needless to say, these provided much distraction and entertainment throughout the night. |
|---|
| Odin's Ravens |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. |
|---|
| Summary | This is one of the new 2-player games by Rio Grande (Kosmos). It's been getting pretty good press despite having an error in the rules translation. I down loaded the correct version of the rules, and couldn't wait to give this game a try. The best simple description of this game is that it is a two player version of King of the Elves. Players try to match terrain cards with travel cards from their hand in order to move their ravens along the path. The first player to reach the end scores one point for every space he is ahead of the other player. Besides the travel cards, each player's deck also has Odin cards which do miscellaneous meta game things such as add or remove cards from the travel path, rotate a travel card (switching the terrain each player must travel through on that card), place the Odin marker (an obstacle), or move a raven forward or backward. Besides playing a card to move his raven, a player may also play a card to the Magic Way. The Magic Way is a special card that is drawn at the beginning of the game. It shows two types of cards on it, either two terrain or one terrain and Odin. Players may play cards to the Magic Way that match one of these two types of cards. At the end of the race, whoever played the most cards to the Magic Way scores a bonus 3 points.
Todd and I played a couple of hands before we got all the rules right, so we started over. It turns out to be a nice 2-player game, with lots of decisions to make. The main tactic of the game is to use your Odin cards to arrange the path so that you have several of the same type of terrain in a row, as you can move through all of them with one card of the appropriate type. But you have to weigh the advantage of moving your raven forward against playing to the Magic Way or playing to your auxiliary stack, from which you can play cards later. In our game, I won the first two races by 3 points each, with Todd and I tying on the Magic Way (you keep playing until someone reaches 12 points). The third race I won by 5 with Todd getting the Magic Way, And I also won the 4th race with Todd taking the Magic Way, giving me the win.
I would probably rank it in the top 5 of two player games. I don't think it is as deep as LOTR: The Confrontation, but deeper than Lost Cities, and it is fun to play. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Everett P. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Everett P. (15) 2-Todd J. (6) |
|---|
| Ratings | Todd J. (8) Everett P. (7.5) |
|---|
| Mexica |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. |
|---|
| Summary | Todd and I were still waiting for more people to show up, and since Todd had never played Mexica before, we pulled that out. This seems to be the least popular game in the Tikal trilogy in our group, even though I really like it, so I was glad to get a chance to play it again. I established the strategy of founding the large districts as soon as I could, not worrying about building them at first. Todd concentrated on building the smaller districts and putting buildings in the district, including the ones that I had founded. After all the districts were founded, I went back and tried to take back the large districts Todd had built in. At one point in the middle of the game, the largest district (13 spaces) was completely filled with buildings, except for the two spaces Todd and I had our Mexica on, and with Todd and I having the same number of buildings in the district. This resulted in a Mexica stand-off, as neither one of us wanted to be the first person to move their Mexica, giving the other player the opportunity to build a building on that space. We spent several turns where we either collected action tokens, or moved our Mexica out to build a building only if we could move it back before our turn was over. Todd was the first person to cave, but only after I had used all my small buildings so that I had to place a three story building when a one story would have been sufficient. In the end, I was able to re-take enough of the larger districts to retain the lead and the win. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Everett P. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Everett P. (138) 2-Todd J. (112) |
|---|
| Ratings | Todd J. (7) Everett P. (7.5) |
|---|
| Evo |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. Joe P. Steve M. Joe K. |
|---|
| Summary | Steve had arrived while Todd and I were playing Mexica, and with a couple of phone calls, convinced a couple of other Interzoners to show up. It had been a long time since Evo hit the table, so everyone was eager to play it. I went for a fairly balanced dinosaur, with my main advantage being that I grabbed the first two horns, so I could easily attack anyone near me. Joe K. went for legs, and was able to keep his dinosaurs alive by always being able to move them to good areas. Steve had horrible luck, and even though he always had at least a one horn advantage, his record was 2 - 5 when he attacked. Joe P. went for the eggs, ending up with a total of 4 of them. He had the most dinosaurs throughout the game, and would have won if Steve hadn't played a card that caused players to lose points for each dinosaur that they had die during the survival phase, and Joe was stuck losing 4 points that way. It was a close game between me and Joe K. most of the game, with Joe P. quickly closing. In the end I was able to just barely hang on to the lead. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Everett P. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Everett P. (56) 2-Joe P. (55) 3-Joe K. (52) 4-Todd J. (41) 5-Steve M. (34) |
|---|
| Ratings | Todd J. (6) Everett P. (9) Joe P. (7) Steve M. (7) Joe K. (7) |
|---|
| The Bucket King |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. Vince B. |
|---|
| Summary | A few more people had shown up, so we now had 7 players, but nobody was really interested in the two games that we had on hand that could handle that many people, Citadels and Bohnanza, probably because they both have been played a little too much recently. So we broke up into two games. I wanted to try yet another new game I had picked up, The Bucket King.
Each player starts with a hand of 12 cards. The cards consist of 5 suits (colors) in values from 1 to 8. At the start of the game, each player has 3 buckets in each of the 5 colors, for a total of 15 buckets with which they build a 5 story pyramid. During the course of the game, the lead player plays 1 to 3 cards of one suit. The next player then must play 1 to 3 cards of the same suit with a total value higher than the previous player. The next player must do the same thing. This continues until one player can no longer play. This player must remove one of his buckets of that color, and any buckets that were supported by that bucket. Then they start the next round of card play. This continues until one player's bucket pyramid is completely destroyed, then each player scores a number of points equal to the number of buckets they have left. We played three rounds, and each player lost their pyramid once. Vince and I both ended up with scores of 9, and since there is no tie-breaker, we shared the win. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Everett P., Vince B. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Everett P. (9) 1-Vince B. (9) 3-Todd J. (4) |
|---|
| Ratings | Todd J. (7.5) Everett P. (6) Vince B. (5) |
|---|
| Carcassonne |
| Played By | Joe P. Steve M. Joe K. Tim A. |
|---|
| Summary | This was the game that the other group played. I don't know much about how the game went, except that they were naming their cities after some of the more private body parts. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Joe P. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Joe P. 2-Steve M. 3-Tim A. 4-Joe K. |
|---|
| Ratings | Joe P. (8.354) Steve M. (8.3) Joe K. (7.12) Tim A. (8.35) |
|---|
| Gargon |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. Vince B. |
|---|
| Summary | We had finished The Bucket King while the other group was still playing Carcassonne, so we decided to play a quick game of Gargon. As I've said before, this often ends up being a very mean game, with players playing cards to keep the last person from being able to play. Todd had a couple of very nice rounds, one where he brought home both doublers of one color, and another where he collected 9 amulets. These ended up giving him an easy win. |
|---|
| Winner(s) | Todd J. |
|---|
| Finish | 1-Todd J. (84) 2-Everett P. (74) 3-Vince B. (70) |
|---|
| Ratings | Todd J. (8) Everett P. (8) Vince B. (8) |
|---|
|