New Game: Pick and Pack!

Tony and I played this new game that I've just picked up the day before. We had Berkant and Mike as floating audience...heh. Both of us played for the first time, but I thought I had a slight advantage after having self-played (though badly) once before. And off we go...well, Tony was constantly picking up lots of apples, so I fell behind with that. It was about picking up apples in the beginning, and trying to do various actions later in the game. I put a premium on one of my better crates with only 2 trays on it, and put a wholesale on one of Tony's crates that had a tray with 6 apples. Then Tony put two wholesales on two of my crates, leaving me with only one crate left in play. But since Tony blocked one of my premium tiles, that means that this crate would remain open for the rest of the game. Close to the end, I made a strange maneuver to swap one of my 1-apple trays with one of Tony's 2-apple trays utilizing a rush order action. Little did I know then, this would be a game breaker for me, as I won by 1 point! Tony had 13 + 4(.5) + 10 + 14(premium) for 41 points, while I had 5(.5) + 4(.5) + 18(premium) + 15 for 42 points. Nice! Not a bad game, though it does burn the brain just a little. Tony mentioned that he was only looking for me to get fewer apples while I was looking to prevent him from taking certain actions, which was certainly true. So now I'm going to lose the next time...heh.

Power Grid Italy with New Plants!

I picked up the Italy/France map just this day, and played the Italy portion in the evening with Harry and Li Zhen. And we used the new power plants. It's a double expansion game! We played the higher-cost lower three regions, together with the higher resource costs, it should have been a game where money was tight...unfortunately, not so with the efficient power plants! So money was almost never an issue, which kind of took a bit of fun out of the game. But in any case, we proceeded as usual, this time I actually built more houses than Harry sometimes! Initially I was blocked in by both of them, but I rammed north to take a stake there (with enough money to do that...heh).

The power plants were mostly balanced, so we couldn't get a lasting plant early in the game, which is good. Step 3 auctions were kind of lame, though, since we were all trying to bet if the next plant is going to be one of those giant ones. So instead of bidding high for a plant, there was almost no bidding. In the end, I was the only one with 19 capacity while both Harry and Li Zhen had 18 capacity. I had just enough money to build to 19 cities, so I won. Harry had less money than Li Zhen, so Li Zhen got second place. But the trick is, had Li Zhen bought one more plant in the last round to raise his capacity to 19, there was a possibility that he might have won...heh. But for now, I win for the first time in a while.

About the new power plants...I think the way we play them sort of ruins part of the fun. The giant plants that are above 50 messes things up quite a bit. Maybe that's why for a few games now, we had enough capacity to finish the game way before we had enough cities on the board. That slowed the tension by quite a bit. So in the future, we should either play with the old plants or play only the new plants up to 50, like what the rules said...heh.

Final scores:
Li Zhen: 18 capacity and cities, 53 dollars left.
Harry: 18 capacity and cities, 36 dollars left.
Me: 19 capacity and cities, 36 dollars left.

New Power Plants!

It was a Sunday night, and everyone was bored. I bought the new Power Grid Power Plant Deck, and enticed people to play for two days, and finally Li Zhen Harry Forest took the bait. We played at Li Zhen's place. First of all, a note about the quality of the new plants...they're ok, I guess, but not as good as the original. The new plants are suffering from a little warping already, and it spins a lot on the table. Also, it seems that the printing was coming off pretty easily...anyway, these are just small complaints...on we go with the games!

Harry and Li Zhen decided to have a drink of alcohol, Li Zhen doesn't seem to be affected, but Harry was louder than usual...heh. Anyway, we played on the US map with NE and South-Central excluded, forming an arch type shape for our game. Initially I accidentally put up the wrong restock chart, gaining protest from Harry for buying oil plant that could end up costing him more than he thought. But we proceeded anyway, since we don't want Harry to win. I tried the garbage approach again. The three of them battle for the east while I tried a new approach by settling alone in the west coast.

Surprisingly I was the one triggering step 2, and things started to go bizarre. The power plant market stalled. All the plants in the market only powered 3 or 4 cities, and we wanted to upgrade to large ones. So for three or four turns, nobody bought any power plants. Meanwhile, I was stuck with capacity 9, and the other three had higher capacities (10 or 11). Not only that, my resources were costing more than the other three, so obviously my cash reserve after this stall was low. Meanwhile, the three of them kept on expanding their cities, but I kept back, only having the necessary 9 cities and not building.

Finally, a barely buyable plant came up, and it powers 5 cities. I was aggressivly pushing to buy this one, and got it, pushing my capacity to 12. Unfortunately, the step 3 card appeared right after, meaning that good plants were being pushed up to the market one at a time. Li Zhen got one next, pushing his capacity to 14. Forest didn't get one. So Harry got to buy one at face value, and it just happens to be one that has capacity 7, pushing his capacity to 17. At this point, we figured it's pretty much over, and we were right, since Harry simply used his massive reserve to build up to 17 cities, and he won.

But...this felt like quite an unsatisfying end, so Forest Li Zhen and I kept on playing as a 3-player game. We wanted to have an opportunity to play the big plants. In the next round, all three of us got a plant (I got the fusion plant for 6, used to cost 50, now only 44), and at that point both Li Zhen and I had capacity 16, while Forest was below that. So now if either Li Zhen or I build to 17 cities, the game would be over and the two of us will compare money for the secondary winner. I knew that I would have less money, so I only built to 16 cities. Li Zhen was afraid that I have more money than him, so he didn't trigger the end game and built to 16 cities as well. Forest was just happy to be still in the game.

Then the final round came. Coal was running short. I only have supplies for one coal plants, and was sure to have no more coal available to me this turn since I'm first in turn order after having bought that fusion plant. Only two plants remain in the deck, and one coal plant that powers 7 came out, which was the only plant in the market that would improve my capacity. I cannot pass, so I picked that one, hoping that there's a slim chance that Li Zhen would get it so that I would have the other big plant available. Well, Li Zhen was smart, so he passed. I replaced this new plant with my original coal plant and increased my capacity by 2. If I had replaced another plant, my capacity would increase by 3, but I would not have enough coal to power it all. So now I have capacity 18.

Li Zhen obviously picked the one that came out next, which was the big 50 plant where 2 uranium powers 8! Forest and Li Zhen went to a bidding war for this one, since whoever wins this one would have the highest capacity. The bidding ended when Forest jumped the price from around 70 to 100! Li Zhen thought that's too much for him (foreshadowing!), so he let Forest have it. Now Forest has capacity 19! Li Zhen picked up a nuclear plant that powers 6 to bring his capacity total to 18, hoping to drive the price of uranium up, but it didn't work so well.

Now Forest built up to 19 cities, so he won the secondary game. Li Zhen and I both built up to 18 cities, and we compared our money, which of course Li Zhen had way more than me, so he ended in third place while I was dead last. Now, a couple of analysis...

(a) If Li Zhen knew that I had very little money in the second last round and ended the game at that round, he would have won the secondary game! But I guess he was insecure, or he wanted to play more!

(b) Forest had only 8 dollars left at the end of the game! So if Li Zhen had pushed the price up by at least 9 dollars, Forest would not be able to afford his 19th city, and he would had to compare money with both Li Zhen and I, for which he would definitely lose. That's why it's very important to keep the money secret, or people would overanalyze this so much!

Ok, I enjoyed this game greatly, even though I ended up last. Well, maybe not for the stalling in step 2, but otherwise it was fun.

First stage scores:
Forest: 11 capacity, 16 cities.
Harry: 17 capacity, 17 cities, 93 dollars left.
Li Zhen: 14 capacity, 14 cities.
Me: 12 capacity, 13 cities.

Second stage scores:
Forest: 19 capacity, 19 cities, 8 dollars left.
Li Zhen: 18 capacity, 18 cities, 122 dollars left.
Me: 18 capacity, 18 cities, 46 dollars left.

Quick ingenious game with Gary

It was Friday night, and Gary and I were in my office waiting for Forest and William. I opted for a quick game of Ingenious, which I haven't played in a while. This is a close game, but somehow I was constantly running out of tiles that have my lowest scoring colour. Seeing this, Gary was blocking me left and right. At the last turn, both of us had 7 7 8 as our lowest three scores, but Gary gets one last turn, and he just happened to have something to score for his 8, so he wins! Doh...good game.

Final scores:
Gary: 7 9 15 10 9 7 (7 7 9)
Me: 12 7 8 13 11 7 (7 7 8)

What? I won at Power Grid?

We still had time, so played a bit of Power Grid Benelux, the supposed faster game among the maps. We picked three sort-of-elongated region this time. Li Zhen picked the south, I picked the north, and Harry was squeezed in the middle, meaning Harry couldn't expand much. Li Zhen was slow in the power plants. I hit step 2, and step 3 came soon afterwards. In the second last round, both Harry and I had capacity 17, but neither of us had enough money to build up to 17 cities. This gave Li Zhen a chance to build up his power plants. I decided to only power 12 cities that turn, hoping to conserve some money with the resources. For the final round, I was last in turn order. Only one 6-plant on the board, the rest 5 or lower, and no more plants were available. Harry passed on the power plants, I decided to put the 6-plant up for auction. If I won that, I would have 18 capacity (and Harry was regretting it now), but if Li Zhen won that, he would have 17 capacity, and we would all go into a tie-breaker. Turns out that Li Zhen wanted that more than I did, so I let him have it. We all built up to 17 cities with 17 capacity, and it was time to reveal the money... Li Zhen had just 2 dollars left... Harry had 73... and I had 94...so even with low power in the second last round, I still won! Yay! That was an interesting game.

What? I won at Settlers?

After the prayer meeting, Harry Li Zhen and I started off with a game of Settlers. I get to pick last, so somehow that's a good thing for me...or so I thought. The game started off pretty evenly, actually, with everyone building nicely up to 4 points or so. But it kind of stalled a bit as brick was scarce. Li Zhen took the longest road, which Harry later took away from him. I got largest army. Lots of 5s were thrown, and each time Harry would get a brick and an ore, and later 2 bricks and 2 ores. After a string of 5s, I used a monopoly to get 7 ores from Harry! But I used them badly, by trading for one development card...which was a soldier. I managed three ports and after a short string of good rolls, I managed to snatch the longest road from Harry and win the game! Wow...I haven't won at Settlers in a long time... And Li Zhen is officially not liking Settlers anymore, just like me...heh.

Final scores: Li Zhen 5, Harry 5, Me 10.

3-player Power Grid Central Europe

Li Zhen joined Harry and I for the Central Europe game. I noted initially that oil is scarce in Central Europe, but apparently they weren't listening...heh. We picked eastern Poland, Slovakia and Austria for yet another elongated play area. This time, the bottleneck is at Wien and Bratislava, and Li Zhen took that one out of the gate. And that had a great impact on the rest of the game. Harry and I were stuck in the north, and later Li Zhen even moved northward as well, so it's infeasible for neither Harry nor I to go down to Austria. That means Li Zhen had control over when step 2 starts...

...but, we had an awful power plant market. All of us have capacity for 5 or 6 already, but for the longest time, the power plants for sale all have capacities 2 or 3. So for many many rounds, all of us were simply gathering up money, while Li Zhen refuses to go into step 2 until he buys a better plant. Meanwhile, both Harry and I needed oil for our plants while Li Zhen only needed coal and very cheap uranium. Oil was running dry, and our costs for oil went higher and higher.

Eventually, Li Zhen sees another uranium plant on the market and bought it. In that round, he finally broke into step 2 with the building, but Harry and I still couldn't build because we have to wait until the next round. At the end of the round, after placing the highest power plant under the deck, the replacement card was the step 3 card! So this is the round where both step 2 and 3 happened! This has never happened before...

Now we can go on a shopping spree for power plants. I first set my eyes on the 3 hybrid -> 7 cities plant, and Harry wanted that too. The bidding went crazy...eventually I bought it for 75 bucks! Yikes. Then Harry set his eyes on a 2 oil -> 6 cities plant, but (wisely) decided against it since oil was running dry. That round, though, I bought all the oil, so while Li Zhen and I both powered around 10 cities, Harry only powered 2, so he must be low on money. Next round, Harry and Li Zhen went on a bidding war over the 3 coals -> 7 cities plant, which Harry won for 80 bucks! Harry was not expecting that, I think... Li Zhen picked up a 3 trash -> 7 cities one, while I picked up the 2 oil -> 6 cities one, which I can afford since I was first to buy resources. But, unfortunately for me, I don't have enough money to build up to 17 cities, which means I need another round to win. But I don't have another round, unfortunately, as Li Zhen has a ton of money (who knew) and builds up to 18 cities to win. Meanwhile, Harry still had one oil plant that he couldn't power, so his score is pretty low. That was a very intense end game, I think. Quite enjoyable, too, if not brain burning...

Final scores:
Harry: 17 capacity, 12 resources, 13 cities, $70 left.
Li Zhen: 18 capacity, 18 resources, 18 cities, $157 left.
Me: 18 capacity, 18 resources, 15 cities, $21 left.

2-player Power Grid Benelux

Harry and I played on the Benelux map using three elongated regions from top to bottom, with a bottleneck at Maastricht. Harry took that city initially, but I managed to cut him off from the north, though. Somehow I was always low on cash, behind on the city building, and that hurt me at the end. I was the first to have capacity 21 while Harry have around 14, but I couldn't build up to 21 in that round. Next round, Harry gets up to capacity 20, but I still couldn't build up to 21 cities. Instead, he built up to 21 cities, winning the game by powering 20 while I only powered 18. Oops. Anyway, it's a very quick game, I think.

Final scores:
Harry: 20 capacity, 21 cities, $4 left.
Me: 21 capacity, 18 cities, $11 left.

First Full Game of Settlers in the Office

So Mat saw the board when he entered unexpectedly...and the three of us played it. It was a wood-barren board, and I went first, so I picked a 3/11/6 wood/wood/wheat corner. After Tony and Mat placed their settlements, I ran out of luck. The only viable choice for me was on a 4/8 ore with 3:1 port. Doh. That pretty much doomed me, I think.

And the game begins. First, we find it funny that Mat called the development cards "devvy cards." Next, Tony was buying development cards like crazy (for a total of about 6 or 7 in the game), so Mat called him a "devvy baron"...heh. In any case, I was pretty much boxed in for expanding territories. And there is one spot that I had my eyes on for a while, only to be taken by Mat after (a) he used a road building card to get there and (b) I traded a wheat with him so that he could build the settlement there. Doh. Tony got the largest army for sure. But then Mat made a peculiar move...one where he offered to give Tony 5 cards for his "eternal goodwill"...heh. Well, obviously Mat was trying to avoid the 7, but what we didn't know is that in the next turn, he built a road to get the longest road card, upgraded a settlement to a city, then revealed his VP card to claim the victory. That was quite an interesting game, I think (though I was really never in the running). Tony had two VP cards, so he ended up with 8 points. I had lots of wheat and ore to give me 3 cities and a total of 6 points. I think we may be doing this in our office again...

Tony's First Settlers Experience

For some reason, I've decided to give Tony the rules for Settlers. He seemed to get it. And off we go... Just Tony and I now, me thinking that this is just a trial run to get him familiar with the rules and stuff. Turns out that my initial placement is so bad (because I wasn't thinking about it) that it impeded my progress greatly. Meanwhile, Tony was doing various things, building settlements, upgrading, buying development cards. Just as I started to catch up, it was time for him to go to a seminar. So we decided to end the game there. Turns out that both of us had a VP development card, so he won with a score of 6 to 5. Doh.

3 games with forest

Played Ingenious for the first time, and played 3 times in a row since Forest was addicted instantly! I only got the scores...I won 2 out of 3. Scores in brackets are the lowest ones that determined the winner.

Game 1:
Forest: 10 12 11 9 9 11 (9 9)
Me: 10 11 9 11 12 10 (9 10)

Game 2:
Forest: 8 18 18 8 9 14 (8 8 9 14)
Me: 8 18 9 9 8 9 (8 8 9 9)

Game 3:
Forest: 11 9 9 9 10 18 (9 9 9)
Me: 10 14 14 10 9 9 (9 9 10)

More (fun and) games with John and Tim (3/3)

That php thing didn't work so well, so I decided (foolishly) to make a program that would throw 10 sets of dice without revealing what the results are, and let the player blindly choose which one to be the official one. Surely this would cut down on the complaints about randomness, right? Yeah..........not. I mean, there are 10 choices up there (without you knowing what the choices are), but if you select the one with the only 7 on there, then it's really your fault that you didn't avoid it, right? Sigh...

In addition to the dice throws, however, I've finally implemented the (what I thought would be a) kryptonite for John: a chess timer! So each player has a clock, starting with 30 minutes. Once you "throw the dice," the clock starts to count down until you hit the "end turn" button. With John being so slow each time, surely he is going to make unnecessary mistakes in order to beat the clock... Yeah.............not.

What ended up happening was that a lot of 3s and 11s were thrown, all in John's favour. Several times, Tim said "next" too quick, i.e. after I have hit "end turn" for him, and he suffered greatly for that, like not using some of the resources or progress cards soon enough. Meanwhile, John used an all-too-cruel and nasty strategy of constantly activating the knight to steal from Tim, all just for a sheep... This made Tim angry (even though he invented this strategy). (Aside: A day later, I realized that this is an illegal strategy, since each knight can perform an action only once per turn...doh. And there are other uses of the knight which I wasn't aware of, which makes the game a lot more interesting...) Anyway, the story goes, John built too quick, and won the game with close to 7 minutes left on his clock. Doh...

Now they want me to do a program where each of the 216 dice throws is represented as a button...yikes. Yet another attempt to get a truly "random" game...which will never happen...

Final scores (time remaining): John 13 (6:52), Tim 5 (15:16), Me 9 (19:03). I'm always the fastest.

More (fun and) games with John and Tim (2/3)

John insisted on playing Puerto Rico for several days now, even though Tim insisted on playing Settlers Expansion. Solution: we play both, and I get insomnia. First up, Puerto Rico. In this game, Tim and I produced a lot, and shipped a bit, but not much, since John certainly wasn't going to Captain nor Craftsman. Somehow each time John produced something, either they go to waste because no ship can take them, or he couldn't sell to the trading house since it was already there or full. But what John lacked in goods and shipping, he gained in buildings, tons of them. Eventually he ended the game by occupying all the building space that he got. Even being low on shipping, he still came remarkably close to winning...but Tim snagged the victory this time.

Final scores (VP chips + building VPs + large building bonus VPs):

John: 1 + 23 + 13 = 37.
Tim: 16 + 16 + 7 = 39.
Me: 13 + 15 + 6 = 34.

More (fun and) games with John and Tim (1/3)

As if I didn't have enough torture, I went back to play games with John and Tim... Why did I do that? I don't know. Anyway, Tim and I played a game to start, and the choice of game: Power Grid! Yay...finally. This is the first time I've ever played the 2-player version, and it's not that bad...

We chose the three central regions of the US for this game. The auctions were generally not too exciting, going up by at most 4 from the base price. I somehow decided that I would use garbage and uranium, while Tim used primarily coal and oil. So of course my resources were a lot more costly than his. We were both neck-and-neck in terms of getting capacity and building cities, though somehow Tim was one city ahead of me. But we got to a point where none of the power plants on the market was good to buy, so we passed on buying one for several terms, amassing a lot of money. This was where an interesting thing happened...

Tim bought a nuclear plant, and then we were both tied for plant capacity (11). He bought two uraniums, hence driving up the price to 12 for me. I had two uranium plants, and thinking that uranium is too expensive, I bought only one uranium. And then we were off to city building. This is where the massive money that Tim accumulated from the previous rounds came into play: seeing that I didn't have the resources to power more cities than him, he decided to build (from 8) up to the game-ending 21 cities, and ended the game right there. That was a very clever move! Nice one. So even though he could only power 11 of his 21 cities, he still won...heh. So in the end, my timing was off by just a step, and lost the game. Still a fun game for 2 players here. Only got to step 2...heh.

Final scores:

Tim: 11 capacity, 21 cities, 11 powered, 54 dollars left.
Me: 11 capacity, 9 cities, 9 powered, 192 dollars left.

Painful gaming (2/2)

Worst game ever. Yeah. Anyway, it was a Sunday, and somehow John decided that he wouldn't sleep during the night...so that just shows how awake he was. Back to games, Tim was waiting for revenge from the game last time, so we played yet another game of Settlers Expansion (which is a game I simply don't want to play, quite frankly).

We used the php dice thrower again. This time, it seemed to favour a ton of 6s, hence John was able to build a metropolis almost right off the bat. John built to a quick lead while Tim and I were far behind. Somehow, though, John seemed upset, and this was especially true after he built a city that was almost immediately downgraded by the barbarian. And even though we warned him about that, he still got angry and complained about everything, and of course things didn't go his way because Tim and I were teaming up against him and stuff...I don't know, he displayed a ton of ridiculously negative emotions, even though he was winning. This is when I realize something: a game is played to have fun, when the game stopped getting fun, maybe we should stop playing. And that is probably what we should have done, just stop playing.

Not surprisingly, John won. Then he started smiling, and then he started to berate Tim and I for how bad our positions on the board were, and how his was so good, even though Tim and I knew that it's all because of the incredibly lucky dice throws that got him the win. That was just horrible behaviour from John. Anyway, that is that for the worst game ever.

Final scores: Me 6, Tim 6, John 13.

Painful gaming (1/2)

Horrific gaming...and that's only the start. So I've hastily made a php webpage (learning php at the same time...heh) which simulates dice throws in Settlers Expansion. Thinking that this might quelm the complaints that come from "real" dice being unfair. Well, think again, I say. The computer dice seem to like certain numbers over other numbers, or at least that's what we felt like. Somehow or another, this meant that John won the game. So then Tim and I complain about the dice...doh. All I remember was that it was so painful to play this game...but as I said off the top, this was only the start...

Final scores: Me 8, Tim 5, John 13.

Ah...I remember more now...this is the game where John built all three metropoli...had one defender vp, which he forgot, so he took the merchant...

Thursday gaming with Tony & Zhentao (3/3)

Strange game of Torres. Actually, I don't remember much from this game. I'm in green, Zhentao in orange, Tony is blue. Two giant castles were in play, and mostly we competed to get the highest in these two castles. In the process, I have obtained diagonal-jump card and the over-the-knight jump card in order to get up. However, just when I was ready to jump over Zhentao's knight in the western castle, Zhentao moved that knight to somewhere else...doh. So that was a silly move for me. Anyway, Zhentao won this one, sweeping the night's games.

Scores:

After phase 1: Me 23, Tony 30, Zhentao 38.
After phase 2: Me 105, Tony 93, Zhentao 125.
After phase 3: Me 245, Tony 234, Zhentao 272.

Thursday games with Tony and Zhentao (2/3)

Carc with expansion! Zhentao and Tony finally agreed to add an expansion to this game, and Inns and Cathedrals are mild enough that it doesn't change much of the game, so off we go. I drawn both Cathedrals, placing one in Tony's large city, hoping that he wouldn't complete it, and placing the other one in my large city, hoping that I could complete it. In the end, both of us gave up on completing our Cathedral cities, and ended up scoring nothing for those cities...oops. Tony's was just one tile short, though (the SW city in the picture).

One of the most interesting feature was the one on the NW corner. Tony first had a city there, however, Zhentao built two cities nearby, threatening to join them together and making Tony's city useless. To complete all of these cities, though, they needed a 3-sided city tile. There was one 4-sided city tile in the original set of tiles, but I drew that one, so I didn't complete that city for them. The 3-sided tiles came very late in the game. There were the two Cathedrals in the expansion, but of course I drew those, so that didn't work. Just when we were thinking that there was no way that those cities could be completed, Zhentao drew a 4-disjoint-city tile from the expansion! He didn't get the huge city, but he did complete two cities, Tony completed his one city, and they all got tons of points for that. In addition, Zhentao farmed in the middle of that tile, so he got 12 points off of that farm. Doh.

The big meeples only came into play once, when I was competing for that (what end up being) a small city on the extreme SE. Zhentao was not happy...heh.

Close to the end, Tony drew a tile and placed it quickly. But later he wanted to change it so that he could join a farmer to the giant farm. Too bad, we said no. And what happened was that had we let Tony join that farm, he would have tied for first place for the game! This is almost reminiscent of a previous game that we played...so proper farming is important!

Final scores: Me 92, Tony 85, Zhentao 108.

Thursday games with Tony and Zhentao (1/3)

We gamed at the 4th floor TV room in my apartment. We made another attempt at Play It By Ear, even though that's probably Tony's game to lose. Well, I pulled ahead at the beginning, but Tony passed me soon. Throughout the game, it seems that Zhentao and Tony kept getting the easier categories... In the end, though, Zhentao hit an easy short term memory category, and then made a wild guess on a Godfather question, and he won! He's not supposed to win at this game...but he won! And that's the only shocking thing for this evening. Close to the end, I was behind a bit, so I bet big on several questions, only to take me even more behind. Final scores: Me 5, Tony 13, Zhentao 18.

First 4-player Torres

Yes, first 4-player Torres. And it felt quite different, since the number of blocks that each player gets is pretty limited, so I can't always build what I want to build.

Wooo...pictures! First time I photographed a game for reference! Too bad the focus wasn't throughout the board...and since this is a 3D game, some info is not shown correctly.

I'm in orange, Li Zhen in green, Brian in blue, and Ed/Ingrid (newbies) in black. Brian jumped into a big lead early on, while I missed a knight on a castle, got myself behind and never recovered. In phase 3, I placed the king at this impossible location, so nobody can get the bonus...heh. I was thinking of placing at the lone castle block on the east end, thinking that perhaps I could build a tower of height 3 beside it and stand there all by myself...unfortunately that would violate the area >= height rule...

I tried to come back late in the game, and managed to get really high up on that NE castle, and preventing others from getting higher. However, since Brian couldn't get the height there, he suffered a bit from that castle's scoring, while Ed/Ingrid somehow managed to get just one level below me. The most hotly contested castle was the one in the SE, where attempts to block people from getting higher meant 6 knights were placed in that one castle! That's just strange yet amazing... In the end, Ed/Ingrid caught up and won the whole thing.

With 4 players, it certainly felt a lot more chaotic, but still kind of fun. However, being behind is so hard to catch up...

Scores:

After phase 1: Li Zhen 30, Ed 33, Me 27, Brian 42.
After phase 2: Li Zhen 103, Ed 112, Me 90, Brian 118.
After phase 3: Li Zhen 211, Ed 227, Me 195, Brian 221.

Afternoon gaming with Zhentao (4/4)

One final game with Zhentao before we were done for the day. Carcassonne was played, and this time, he got the upper hand. In fact, I lost pretty badly...heh. Maybe that's why I don't remember much of the details...

Final scores: Me 78, Zhentao 127.

Afternoon gaming with Zhentao (3/4)

Torres was on the table already, so why not play a second game? This one's funny, though. I built a large castle (initially with a hole in the middle...heh...later filled up the hole), and got up there sooner than Zhentao did. So I had a small lead after phase 2. During the end of phase 3, Zhentao was competing for height in that giant castle, and he built it so that he needed the elevator card to get up there...but he forgot that he didn't take that card in the previous turns! I was winning anyway, so I let him have the elevator card...heh. That large castle ended up having a surface area of 12 and height 8.

Scores:

After phase 1: Me 25, Zhentao 24.
After phase 2: Me 101, Zhentao 95.
After phase 3: Me 265, Zhentao 258.

Afternoon gaming with Zhentao (2/4)

First Torres with Zhentao. First time I played a 2-player version of this game. Not too bad, actually. Pretty close all throughout the game, and Zhentao managed to win by 1...heh.

Scores:

After phase 1: Me 33, Zhentao 36
After phase 2: Me 104, Zhentao 103
After phase 3: Me 217, Zhentao 218

Afternoon gaming with Zhentao (1/4)

4 games were played in Zhentao's office between Zhentao and I. First game: Meeples! I only remember that somehow I kept closing cities that were nearly impossible to close, and somehow I have meeples in my hand all the time. Maybe that's how I won the game...heh. Scores: Me 120, Zhentao 113.

Tuesday evening with John and Tim (2/2)

Second game of Puerto Rico. This is one where no one wanted to end the game, since none of us knew if we would win or not. And when it ended, all three game-ending conditions were met, each occurring during one player's turn. How nice is that? John won this one, but later I found a rule that we played wrong, which would have given Tim the win...heh. The rule that we played wrong was the Mayor phase...apparently in addition to placing the new colonists on the board, you can switch around the current colonists as well. Since we didn't allow this, one of Tim's large buildings went unoccupied, losing him about 4 or 5 points, which would have been enough to win.

Final scores (VP chips + building VPs + large building VPs):

Me: 26 + 19 + 15 = 60
Tim: 30 + 25 + 7 = 62
John: 37 + 19 + 9 = 65

Tuesday evening with John and Tim (1/2)

Well, a game of supposedly "quick" Settlers with John and Tim will always be a contradiction. In this case, it ran for 46 minutes (I think). John built to a quick lead, and at 8 points, he was just one soldier away from getting the Largest Army and win. But, Tim didn't want that to happen...instead, he built a long enough road to take away John's Longest Road, so we play some more. Eventually it got to a point where both John and Tim had 9 points. It was my turn, and John had received a ton of resources. I think the only way I could win was to get more development cards, but unfortunately that didn't happen (I've already had 2 VP cards). I traded with Tim to get those development cards. Tim's next, and he used the resource that he got from me and won the game. John was not happy, obviously, because he could have won next...heh. Of course even if I didn't make that last trade with Tim, he still would have won, but John would complain about it, obviously. Final score: Me 8, Tim 10, John 9.

Ranting...

I don't get the argument that a game is more fun when you have full control of your destiny. At least that's what Harry and John have been saying, and I just don't understand it at all. Sure you can have the perfect plan and the perfect strategy, but that wouldn't be fun without some luck and/or spoilers from fellow players. Of course I think they're complaining mostly because they didn't win, or hadn't won for a while, which is true. I had a long winless streak, but I still enjoyed the gaming...and now that I seem to be winning more often, they are still the same enjoyable game. I don't know why this is frustrating me, since I shouldn't really care about what other people think...maybe I'm afraid that I would lose opportunities to play games if they don't want to...hmm... Anyway, maybe that's why I should just stick to playing with casual gamers, those who are not very serious about the necessity of winning every single game. Just venting a little.

First 5-player game of Power Grid

Saturday night, and for the first time we played a 5-player version of Power Grid. I have to say off the top, though, that I didn't like it...maybe I was playing with the wrong people, or maybe having 5 players is simply too much for this game, which lacks the tension of a close game among all players. In any case, we played the US map with the SW region excluded. The players are Ed John Harry Brian and I. Ed and John were newbies. And the game starts...

...with step 1 taking a long time...heh. I built at the gateway to the NW which had access to the cheap cities in central US and have a first crack at the expensive NW. Brian and John occupied the east coast, Ed started in the south while Harry was somewhere in the middle. Step 1 didn't end until most of the board was filled up except for the NW...heh. Brian could have triggered step 2 if he had built a connection that crisscrosses at least 4 other cities...heh. But he didn't, and John did.

Meanwhile, the power plant market was really bizarre. Even at step 2, there were some pretty useless plants still on the market. Because of that, I was way behind in getting the plants, since I only want to cycle the plants only once. I had two garbage plants and one wind plant powering a total of 6 cities for a long time, even after I've built past 6 cities. The others all had pretty steady growth in plant capacities while I lagged behind. I was called the garbage man, since I was the only one with garbage plants (which is a good strategy if I want to have resources, except garbage was never cheap). Ed was in a hurry to go home (since it was late), so there was one round where he built up to 12 cities from 7 or 8, and then we all tried to play catch up...heh.

Step 3 came pretty quickly after step 2, and then the big plants came out (this is where I forgot to perform the rule that says I should shuffle the plants after step 3 card came out...oops). There was a point where both Harry and Ed had capacity 14, the rest of us below that. If one of them built up to 15 cities, then the game would end, and presumably Harry and Ed had to compare money to see who wins. However, the one who builds to 15 would spend the extra money to build to 15, hence reducing his money supply. Harry went before Ed, and Harry built up to 14, but didn't want to build to 15 and take that risk. Wrong move. Ed could only build up to 14 during his turn and ran out of money. Doh for Harry...heh. Then came the final round...

The bidding for power plants was fierce this time around. John first bought a plant to bring his capacity up to 16. Then Harry and Brian bid for a 7-plant, and Harry got it, but at a very costly price. This brings Harry up to capacity 17. Brian bought a plant to bring him up to capacity 16. Then it was Ed's turn. There were two 6-plants on the market, one costing about 35, the other is the fusion plant costing 50, and no 7-plants. Ed needs a 6-plant to get him up to 17, so I could have raise the price with him so that his cost is around 50...but I didn't. Instead, I let him have the 35(?) plant at face value, and I bought the next plant that came up which (fortunately) was a 7-plant, at face value. So in summary, Ed and Harry had capacity 17, while the rest of us had capacity 16.

Fuel supply was plenty for everyone, so that's no problem. I built first, and I got up to 16 cities, which is ok. John was next and he could only build up to 15 cities, so he's out. Ed was next, and he built up to 17 cities and had only 3 dollars left! Doh! So I could have prevented him from building that 17th city and have a chance at winning! Oops... Harry was next, but he didn't have enough money remaining to win, so he decided that he would stop building (which I think is being a bad sport). Brian was last, he didn't have a chance of winning, but he said it best when he wanted to lose in a glorious way...heh. So built up to 17 cities and still had enough money left to keep building...heh. So Ed won during his first game!

In the end, John and Harry complained a lot about this game, and they give a lot of arguments about how bad Power Grid is when those are just reasons why they lost the game...so those are simply excuses for the elements of the game for which they cannot manage well. And I just hate to hear these things from them. It's a really good game!!! Anyway, here are the final scores...

Ed: 17 capacity, 17 cities, 3 dollars left.
John: 16 capacity, 15 cities, 4 dollars left.
Harry: 17 capacity, 14 cities, 46 dollars left.
Brian: 16 capacity, 17 cities, 50 dollars left.
Me: 16 capacity, 16 cities, 12 dollars left.

Very first game of Puerto Rico

Somehow John and Tim were interested enough to play Puerto Rico that we actually tried it, with Li Zhen coming along for the ride as well. So, for the first time since I bought this game back in February, we played it, which means I no longer have any unplayed boardgames!

To start, I have to explain the rules. And with John and Tim, it's always chaotic with the rules. Seriously. And this game is not easy to explain, either, especially with all the buildings, which really made the game quite overwhelming. The game starts...and we still couldn't figure out exactly what's going on with this game. It's just a weird game, I'd have to say. Sure I can see how the mechanics work and stuff, but I simply could not understand how they work together, and if there's any strategy at all...

In any case, Li Zhen and I went for the production strategy, producing a variety of different crops whenever craftsman phase comes. John and Tim went for the building strategy, buying a ton of buildings while not really producing much at all. One thing I forgot was that buying buildings gives victory points, so that's probably my downfall. Even though I accumulated lots of victory points from the deliveries, I lack the points from the other things. In any case, the game ended amidst a lot of confusion, and of course John won with Li Zhen close behind. So now John likes this game...boo...heh.

Final scores: (VP chips + building VPs + large building VPs)

Tim: 15 + 14 + 0 = 29
John: 20 + 17 + 4 = 41
Me: 25 + 12 + 0 = 37
Li Zhen: 17 + 17 + 5 = 39.

Last game of the night: Carcassonne! Or rather, Meeple or Noople! We didn't have much time, and decided that we would not talk or give suggestions during the game. Instead, we will flip a tile ahead of time, keep it to ourselves and have a headstart in the thinking process. Sure, that sounds fine, except it didn't turn out exactly as we have hoped. Instead, sometimes we played so quickly that one didn't know it was his turn... And a lot of times, we think for a long time even with the headstart, since situations changed rapidly.

This was a game of incomplete cities. Tony and Zhentao both built a city near each other, which joined up to a big incomplete city. However, Zhentao had yet another city nearby, which could potentially join up to an even bigger city, giving Tony no points for it. I played the spoiler by placing the 4-sided city tile on the big city, making it difficult to complete. Tony pulled a tile that had two separate one-city blocks on two sides, which he was planning to use to prevent Zhentao from joining up the other city, but he couldn't use it now that I have placed that 4-sided city. So then the only way to complete that giant city was to get a 3-sided city tile with a farm on the fourth side, and only Zhentao would have wanted that tile. By chance, Zhentao never got that tile, so those cities remained incomplete until the end of the game, which was good news for me.

We had at least a couple of other medium-sized cities incompleted, which made farmers not so useful. There were two giant farms, one of which had one meeple each from Tony and I, serving 2 cities (however, Tony sneaked another one in at the end, so he got those 6 points), and another one that had one meeple each from Zhentao and I serving 4 cities (and Tony tried hard to get into this farm, and he only needed one simple road tile to do it, which Zhentao got as the last tile of the game...). The final score was such that if Tony got the tile he wanted and joined a farmer to that 12-point farm, he would have won by 1 point! But he didn't, so I won...for the first time in this trio game group! Yay! But yeah, it was a close game, and we had no idea who was going to win for sure until the end. Good one.

Final scores: Tony 53, Zhentao 58, Me 64.

Second game of the night: Torres! This is fast becoming a favourite of ours, apparently. We didn't build any huge castles this time around, which made things a bit tight for all of us. There was one interesting move at the end... We have this castle of area 5, and Tony was standing on level 4, with a level 5 space right next to it. I wanted to block Tony from going to that level 5 space, so I placed two blocks, one to enlarge the castle by one so that I can use the other to increase the level 5 space to 6. Then I thought, what if Tony had a "jump 2 levels" card? So I placed another two blocks, one to enlarge the castle once again so that I can use the other to increase the level 6 space to 7. Surely that would be ok now. Unfortunately, what I forgot was that Tony might have the "door-to-door elevator" card, and he did. So his knight on level 4 jumped down, added 2 blocks to the level 4 space to make it level 6, used the elevator card to move the knight into the level 6 space, then easily moved up to level 7. Oops...me bad. So by doing this, I lost 4 blocks, and I couldn't increase my score much, hence I lost. Even with this move Tony wasn't able to move ahead much, so he finished last, meaning that Zhentao won.

Final scores:

After phase 1: Me 34, Tony 28, Zhentao 31.
After phase 2: Me 100, Tony 81, Zhentao 101.
After phase 3: Me 216, Tony 197, Zhentao 226.

Thursday C&O boardgame night (which shall be renamed Tony Zhentao and I night)... First game: Play It By Ear! It's the game that Tony had, and had some trivia linked with sound clips. Unfortunately for Zhentao, he didn't like these games because of the trivia element, but played on regardless. And he surprised us all by taking an early lead in the game in the animal and musical instrument categories. I had a very slow start, and never recovered, while Tony gradually increased his score by getting questions one at a time, and made good challenges. In the end, Zhentao tried to make this mathematical by considering the scoring opportunities, but he didn't win. Tony did. I lost badly. Final scores: Tony 14, Zhentao 10, Me 5.

Overall, this game is pretty funny to play, and challenging as well. Even though it's a bit outdated, there's still some fun to be had.

Monday night post prayer meeting: Torres! Li Zhen, Brian were newbies to this game, though they had fun building gigantic walls out of the castle blocks prior to playing already, so they chose to play this game to see what it's about. I being the experienced, one, had a slight advantage...but Brian being the slow-thinker learned the game well enough that he played pretty good. Li Zhen was just playing for fun, I think.

It was a pretty close game, and I don't remember many details about it. Brian and I were tied after the first phase, but because of the ordering, I leaped into the lead by 1. The second phase was so close that the three scoring markers were in consecutive spaces on the scoring track! In the third phase, Li Zhen managed to get up to level 8 on a castle with surface area 11, which I think is the highest-scoring knight ever. Brian managed to get to level 7. I was at level 5, and Brian was trying to block me from going higher and made the adjacent space level 7. Little did he know that he played right into my hand...I had the "door-to-door" card, and was able to sneak into that level 7 space by going through the door on the top block of the level-8 space. And that's how I won the game!

A good game by all, but I probably won due to more experience with the game...

Final scores:

After phase 1: Li Zhen 32, Brian 40, Me 41.
After phase 2: Li Zhen 118, Brian 119, Me 120.
After phase 3: Li Zhen 270, Brian 267, Me 282.

Sunday evening: We were all full after sushi buffet, wanted to sleep but that would be bad for our bodies, so John and Tim came to my place intending to play a couple of games to keep us awake. John wanted to play Power Grid, Tim wanted to play Settlers expansion, so then John wanted to play ordinary Settlers and Power Grid... Needless to say, Tim won out this time, so we attempted a quick game of Settlers expansion...which...is never a quick game!

And it was especially long this time around. The lack of brick and sheet really bogged down the game a lot. We threw a lot of 7s, at very crucial moments, so we threw out a lot of resouces that could have helped us made progress. The barbarian also attacked many many times (at least 6 times, I think), and both John and I had to downgrade during two of those attacks, while Tim earned 3 victory points for having the most knights in 3 separate attacks. In any case, we all built up very slowly, Tim and I were pretty even mostly while John lagged behind. Commodities were also scarce, so only Tim built a metropolis. Throughout the game, I held the longest road, but John had two long segments which he could have joined anytime to take my longest road. Somehow John didn't want to do that, saying that he'll wait until I had 11 or 12 points before taking it from me.

Then there was that last round... Tim was at 11, I was at 10 (one from a victory point card!), John at 8. A series of very good throws meant that I received a ton of resources to use. It was my turn. I used a merchant card to trade some books and got myself a metropolis for 13 points. I was winning already, but I didn't know, forgetting that the merchant is worth a point. I then traded even more to build a city...heh...and I still got about 7 cards left... In any case, I won the game! Tim could have won in the next turn if he build one more road to take my longest road, but he didn't get the chance to do that. In the end, John should've taken my longest road earlier...heh. The game lasted about 2.5 hours, and I don't think I'll want to play this game again...a lot is dependent on the timing of the dice and the shuffling of the progress cards, and it's just too tiring...heh.

Final scores: John 8, Me 13, Tim 11.