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.

There was still time, so played a second game, which ended up being El Grande. This time, it's not that exciting, and in fact Zhentao pulled a large enough lead early that we never caught up. And Tony pulled a large enough lead ahead of me that I never caught up to him. Tony and I both made some mistakes, so we simply couldn't win against the mighty Zhentao...heh. Yeah, for about 2/3 of the game, our scoring markers were on three different edges of the scoring track. There's also the caveat that initially, I forgot that we don't score the third position (since we had only 3 players), so had to backtrack things a bit.

Scores:

After round 3: Me 28, Tony 38, Zhentao 65.
After round 6: Me 47, Tony 73, Zhentao 105.
After round 9: Me 76, Tony 102, Zhentao 148.

Saturday afternoon: a special C&O boardgame gathering of 3 at Tony and Zhentao's place. First game: Torres, which they seemed to like. I started off in the first phase by expanding a castle to a large surface area, and of course this attracted knights of every colour. Tony managed to go one level higher than us, so he was in the lead after the first phase. Zhentao and I were tied after the first phase, however since Zhentao was scored later than I, he got one more point, and he was sad because then he couldn't be in last place and move the king...

I moved to king to this giant castle, and the struggle to get a second knight here started. Tony was the one who was left out of the king's bonus in the second phase, but he still managed to build higher than us, so he was still in the lead. There was one round where I converted an action point into a game point, so moved one ahead of Zhentao. But after scoring phase 2, somehow Zhentao was still ahead of me by 1 point! Again, Zhentao was not happy because he couldn't move the king...

I moved the king to another giant castle that Zhentao built (later having surface area 10). This time all of us got the king's bonus, I blocked Tony from going higher in the first giant castle (which had area 10 and height 8), Zhentao was flustered in not knowing what to do to get more points (which I pointed out for him). For the final scoring, I scored first, then Tony, who leaped just a tiny bit ahead of me, and then scored Zhentao, who scored just one point more than me! Doh! It's like that all through the game! That was a close and exciting game for all of us, and we all liked it.

Scores:

After phase 1: Me 34, Tony 45, Zhentao 35.
After phase 2: Me 116, Tony 128, Zhentao 117.
After phase 3: Me 261, Tony 267, Zhentao 262.

It was late in the day, but John and Tim wanted to play a quick game of Settlers, so we did that, promising that we would finish in 20 minutes. Of course that didn't happen...

What happened was that Tim took a very early lead, and John was not happy about that. So John decided that he would do all he could to prevent Tim from winning, and tried to make me win. The way he did that was making extreme trades with me, where I would give him a brick and he would give me 5 bricks and 4 woods (or something like that). It must be illegal...heh. From these trades, I managed to take away the longest road from Tim, reducing him down to 7 points. He built another city, bought some development cards, and could have won by playing a soldier to get the largest army. Meanwhile, John got a ton of bricks and sheet, and it turns out that I had the brick port and the sheet port, so he used extreme trading to get me to build more cities and settlements, and I won, with Tim dejected. That was one of the funniest games ever, even though we were bad. Oh, and the game ended up going for 47 minutes.

Final scores: Tim 9, Me 10, John 5.

Thursday evening: boardgaming with John and Tim at their place. First game: Torres! A new game for them, and the rule-giving phase was chaotic as usual... They finally got it, but still were confused by some rules mid-game...heh. In any case, they took way too long in deciding everything...really. I don't even remembered what exactly happened in that game, except that John took an early lead, and never lost it, so he won.

Scores:

After phase 1: Tim 25, Me 32, John 37.
After phase 2: Tim 90, Me 92, John 121.
After phase 3: Tim 196, Me 229, John 244.

Monday evening after prayer meeting: With just 3 people left for games, they still picked Power Grid...heh. So it was the first time we played with so few people. And since at least one needs to build to at least 17 out of the 21 available cities, the map was pretty tight as well. We picked the bottom three regions in the Germany map, which meant that expanding costs are high.

It all went pretty smoothly at the start. I was the first one to have capacity 17 for power plants. In the next round (which is the second last one), Li Zhen and I bought up all the oil so Harry couldn't power all of his plants...heh. And if I could just build up to 17 cities, I would win. But, I couldn't, short by about 10 dollars...oops. So I built up to 16, forgetting that I really should have pulled back a couple of cities to go last in the turn order.

Then the last round came. Harry had capacity 17 and Li Zhen had capacity 16. I was the first to buy power plants, and I was afraid that by passing, they could buy power plants to power up to 18 or 19, and I would be out of the running. So I decided to put a 7-plant up for auction. When they saw that I was trying to get up to capacity 19, they were worried and bid as well. Eventually Li Zhen got it, giving him capacity 18. There was only one 7-plant remaining, so I put that up for auction. Harry went to a bidding war with me, since if he doesn't get it, then he could only go up to capacity 18. But he raised prices high enough that even if I win this plant, I could only build up to 17 cities, and I would still lose. So at this point, I was definitely losing this game...

But how to make it fun? I still don't want Harry to win this, so I've decided to raise the price high enough that Harry couldn't both afford the plant and build up to 19 cities (he didn't get enough money from the previous round when oil ran out). And it worked, so I got this plant for a hefty price, I go up to capacity 19, and Harry bought a plant to bring him up to capacity 18. I only had money left to build up to 17 cities, so I was out of running. Li Zhen and Harry both had capacity 18, and built up to 18 cities, so it was a matter of how much money they had left. They refused to be the one to show first...heh...so I decided to go look at their money one at a time...and Li Zhen won! I think I had a hand in helping him win, just as he had a hand in helping me win in a previous game...heh. So that was a fun game that left Harry furious (in a fun way...heh).

Final scores:

Harry: 18 capacity, 18 cities, 40 dollars left.
Li Zhen: 18 capacity, 18 cities, 70 dollars left.
Me: 19 capacity, 17 cities, 12 dollars left.