Tuesday night was dominated by just one game, Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, which is our new Game of the Month! for April.  Gwen got tied up at work, so the baby handoff and suppertime was delayed more than normal, and I didn't arrive until right at 7pm to game night.  AoEIII was already set up and a rules teach was underway for the one new player involved, and there was an empty seat ripe for the picking, apparently just waiting for me to claim it.  As I started to sit down, however, some mean kid on the bus said "Seat's taken!", and I had to take my magic shoes elsewhere*.

Apparently, Chip had reserved a seat at the game through a conversation earlier in the day with Alton, and I ended up desperately afraid that I would be missing out on 2 hours worth of game night this week.  Thankfully, three other people were interested enough to give it a shot and joined me for a separate game.  It was only my second play, and everyone else was new, but I think that I was able to organize my thoughts coherently for a pretty decent rules explanation, and then we got right down to business.

Knowing that AoEIII was going to be the Game of the Month!, I had invested some time in thinking about different strategies that I could try.  For this week, I decided to go with a Capital Building/Specialist/Colonization strategy, where I planned to grab up Merchants, Soldiers, and Missionaries as often as I could, sending them to available colonies for money and control, pick up buildings that would give me extra specialists (grabbing Conquest of the Inca Empire to get a head start on that if possible), and then work towards scoring lots of points in the colonies and from the relevant VP buildings. 

Overall, it worked pretty well.  On turn one, I picked up Training Ground (+1 Soldier each turn) and all three specialists I wanted.  On turn two, I used my extra money from the merchant to buy Trading Post and started taking control of the Caribbean.  Chris Wickline and James started doing a bit of Discovery at this time, while Jen went heavy on the trade goods.  In round three, Conquest of the Inca Empire (+$20 immediately) finally showed up, and I went out on a limb a bit using three of my Colonists to claim it, Monastery (+1 Missionary per turn), and Indentured Servitude (extra colonist in the Colonist Dock each turn) all on the same turn.  As we progressd through the first scoring, I took a modest lead over Chris and James with somewhere around 14 points, while Jen barely made it off the starting space.

Moving in the second age, I started pumping specialists into the Colonist dock as much as I could.  I also started up several battles to pick off competition in all the regions I controlled, and grabbed the Stable capital building to give my army a bit of mobility.  Around this time, Chris started to develop a really strong trade goods/discovery strategy, where he effectively used Captains to start building a fleet of ships and discover several new regions.  James was far less focused in his choices, but still managed to get a couple of Discoveries and started to challenge me in the southern-most colonies.  Jen fell even further behind, because Chris' superior resources and extra actions from capital buildings allowed him to outbid her for Merchant ships and pick up extra trade goods not only from the market, but also from colonization and the use of the West Indes Company (get 1 random trade good each turn).  Still, my hordes of blue colonists dominated almost every region of the New World, and after the second scoring, I had pulled away significantly from everyone else.

On turn 7 (the beginning of the third age), it became obvious that it was a two horse race between the two Dudes Named Chris, Wickline with his incredible merchant fleet and stack of discovery tiles and me (Norwood) with my horde of colonists and metropolis of capital buildings.  Speaking of that, I had conserved my money in the second age and bypassed picking up even the Cathedral (mainly because I was pretty uncontested in the colonies anyway) thinking that I would be able to pick up at least one extra VP-generating buildings on the next turn.  As it turned out, I wasn't thrilled about the initial selection of buildings at the start of Age III, and picked up the Factory (+$30 income each turn) both for its 5 VP and because it would ensure me getting two more buildings on the last turn.  James still hung in there, though, and dropped some soldiers in a couple of colonies as well, managing to gain the advantage in a couple of locations where I was pretty weak.      

And then on the final turn, a few things happened that made the game a lot closer than it should have been.  Chris had already picked up Mercantilism (1 VP per trade good) the turn before, which was already going to give him a crapload of points, and then as we refreshed the board for the last turn, Navy (4 VP per merchant ship) was flipped into the capital building space as well.  I had bypassed Power (2 VP per Soldier in the New World) in the last turn only to see James pick it up, and both Glory (2 VP for each colonized region) and Prosperity (2 VP per building) joined Navy as available buildings. 

After placement of all our colonists and specialists, I had the first and fourth choice for buildings.  It was a tough choice, but decided to take Prosperity because I knew I'd end up with 9 Capital Buildings and that'd be a sure 18 points.  Chris, of course, took Navy, which was worth 20 points to him.  James had third choice, and took the Glory building that I desperately wanted (which was worth 6 points to him but would have been 14 for me).  I had hoped that he'd take Militia to defend himself from my soldiers (because it gives you an automatic soldier in any region where you're attacked), but it was probably a smarter decision for him to take Glory.  With nothing else available to give me VP, I took Militia myself to disuade James from attacking me.  He didn't heed the warning, however, and made one attack that was not such a smart move, because he didn't do much to improve his position in that region but lost 2 soldiers (and therefore 4VP from Power) in the attempt.

After the finaly VP tally, Chris rode his 40-odd points of discoveries, 20 VP from Navy, 13 points from Mercantilism, 17 points from income/trade good sets, and a handful of second-place colonization finishes to a total of 102 points.  He pushed me a lot more than I'd have thought possible, but my capital buildings combined with dominating 7 of the 8 colonies was enough to give me 116 VP for the win.  James scored a respectable 72 points for his first game, and Jen... well, she didn't do so hot.  We all had a good time (except maybe for Jen, of course), and are looking forward to trying it again next week!


Chris Wickline's incredible Merchant Fleet and trade goods Empire!

I could report on the other game of AoEIII, but I don't think I will because I'm still bitter about being excluded. 

By the time Age ofEmpires was all put away and I was ready for something else, it was already 10pm.  Through a bit of cajoling, I managed to convince Alton, Chip, James, and Mark to join me in playing my newest party game, Portrayal.  I had heard some about this "ultimate drawing game" before, and was convinved that I wanted to get it after watching the Boardgames With Scott episode about it.  Anyway, the basic idea is that the "Portrayer" for the turn gets to see and describe a silly picture for 90 seconds.  Everyone else does their best to follow the directions and draw the most detailed picture they can.  Afterwards, the Portrayer reads a list of 10 details about the picture which no one (even the Portrayer) sees until after the drawing is complete.  You score points for details that you included in your picture, and the Portrayer scores for details that at least one of the drawers included.

Alton and Chip tied for the win, Mark and I tied for third, and James finished last.  Ratings for the game were pretty mediocre, which didn't exactly match up to the level of laughter and fun that I witnessed at the table.  But party games, and especially drawing party games, don't appeal to everyone, so that's to be expected.  Personally, I liked the game a lot.  You don't need to have any real drawing talent (thank goodness, 'cause I sure ain't got none), you don't need to get in teams (like most other drawing games), and the scoring is objective and simple (which is pretty rare in party games).  Mainly, you just need to be able to give quick but clear directions, and then to hear and draw rudimentary sketches from others' descriptions.  I can't wait to try our Portrayal with a more party-game friendly crowd to see how they respond to it.

Finally, I finished off the evening with a game of Archaeology: The Card Game.  I played it for the first time last week, and my impression remained mostly the same.  It's solid and quick, but still has quite a few decisions that have a real effect on your position in the game, so I'll be glad to play it every so often as a nice filler.

And I guess that'll pretty much wrap up this week.  I certainly hope to arrive a little earlier next week and maybe be able to get in more than just three games throughout the evening.  But AoEIII is all about depth and quality over quantity of games, so I'll be content either way.        

 
 

*Forest Gump reference, for those of you who are pop-culturally challenged.