Apparently, it can.  The weekly meeting of the Hypermind BoardGamers are always the highlight of my week, but last Tuesday night was a highlight among highlights!  I've been trying to get this written all week, so let me give you the down and dirty...

The main factor in the spectacular success of the evening was definitely from how my play of Age of Empires III (the Game of the Month!) went.  Every other time I've played, it's been an enjoyable but slightly tedious experience that lasted right at 2 hours.  Last week, however, Chris and Mark joined me for a 3-player game that was a total blast and lasted only 62 freaking minutes!  In fact, we ended up playing 4 games in the time that it took the other group to play one 5-player game of AoEIII.

So to give a little report, I started the game off wanting to try a bit of different strategy than I used last week.  I thought that I'd investigate the strength of using Captains to play the discovery game, combining them with Merchants to compete for more merchant ships, and then continuing to make a pretty heavy investment in colonizing as well.  On the first turn, I picked up Trade Routes (free Merchant each turn) to get the steady stream of income from sending Merchants to the New World, and followed it up on turn 2 by grabbing Trading Post (+$5 per turn).  I also picked up Navigator before the end of the first age, which put a Captain each turn into the Discovery box (where I wanted them anyway).  All three of us jockeyed for position in the early colonies, and scoring after turn 3 was pretty even.  

Chris had been hitting the merchant ships really hard, and when he picked up Privateers (steal $1 from every other player for each merchant ship you own) and Taxation (+$10 per turn), he was all the sudden rolling in dough every turn.  In fact, on one turn alone, he managed to pick up three capital buildings.  I hadn't been hitting the trade goods very hard up to this point, but in Age II I grabbed the West Indies Co. (random trade good every turn) and made a much greater investment in building my sets.   I also went into high gear making discoveries whenever I could.  Mark picked up the Monastery/Cathedral combo (giving him a free Missionary each turn and making all his Missionaries worth three colonists instead of 2), but I made modest use of soldiers to be competitive with him in the colonies.  So again, after the second age, the score was pretty tight.

To give away the end of the story, I won the game.  But it was a lot closer than our score indicated, mainly because a couple of the buildings that Chris needed to score big (Prosperity mainly, which would have been 18 or 20 points for him) didn't show up, while I was able to grab both Mercantilism (worth 19 points to me for my trade goods) and Glory (+14 points for me for being in 7 different colonies).  Mark suffered in the end mainly because he didn't have money enough to pick up the big VP buildings that could have helped him, and ended up with 84 points.  Chris did pick up Navy (worth 20 points for his 5 merchant ships) and Wealth (which gave him points for his pile of gold), gathering up 91 points, but after adding up my trade good sets, discoveries, and VP from buildings and colonies, my total was 113. 

All of us increased our rating for AoEIII based on how quick and intense this play was.  It seemed like there were more options open both for strategy and for tactical flexibility with less players, and for sure, the play time was a heck of a lot more preferable.  Of course, the random draw of the Capital Buildings that clearly favored my strategy and hurt Chris left just a hint of a bad taste in my mouth.  I wonder if it might be a good idea to try to play with the order of the capital buildings revealed at the beginning of the game, so that while you still don't know exactly how many will come out (because you don't know how many people will buy), you'd at least get a better idea of which strategies will most likely get a VP boost from them at the end of the game.  But after this experience, it's going to be really hard to make myself play in another 5-player game ever again, which could be an issue if we have 9 or 10 people wanting to play this week.

Three other games that we played in this time were Easter Island, Zombiegeddon, and Ra.  While I've been a long-time fan of Ra and have enjoyed  playing Easter Island a time or two, Zombiegeddon was totally new to me and had me a bit worried.  I shouldn't have been, because the game was a lot of fun.  It's basically a souped-up version of Hey, That's My Fish! with a zombie-pocalypse theme.  The components are a bit basic, but they're functional and didn't detract from the play experience.  The biggest issue I had with the game is that all the tiles look the same, having different art but the same overall muddy brown coloring that is very thematic but make it difficult to differentiate from one type of tile to the other (which is pretty important to do in playing the game).  If they'd just put an outline of some basic color around the edge of the tiles, it'd be a lot easier to play.  I thought I had this one wrapped up with the biggest stacks of collected tiles, but Chris did a better job of collecting sets of some tiles and beat me out by a single freaking point! 

Once the other group finished up their 158 minute-long game of AoEIII, most of us joined together for a game of Citadels, which hadn't hit our playing table for a very long time.  I was a little afraid that with some new people and 7 total players, the game might drag on a bit.  But instead, everybody did a great job both of picking up (or remembering) the rules and playing quickly.  In just over an hour, one of our newcomers, Joe, managed to build into his 8th district and take the win by 9 points.  (Alton, pictured to the left, didn't do so well despite his deep thinking.)  We had a really good time, with lots of table talk and friendly harassment flying around, and when it ended most of us didn't want to call it a night quite yet.

For the last game of the night, we split up again, with some people playing Archaeology: The Card Game and the rest of us continuing the role-selection theme in playing Witch's Brew.  Chris Wickline and Adam Koehler, both new to the game, joined me as we attempted to out-brew each other with all sorts of magical mayhem.  They both picked up on the game really well, and despite the probably less-than-ideal number of players, we had a really great time.  In the end, my experience with the game gave me just enough edge to pull out the win, but it was very close right to the finish. 

Above and beyond the particular games we played and how well that all went, we also had 3 new (or relatively so) players with us last week, and the whole atmosphere and spirit of our gathering was really fun and friendly.  Like I said, I always enjoy game night, but last week was one to remember, and I hope that it carries over to tonight and beyond as well.  
 

Adam and Chris W enjoy the night as we play Witch's Brew!