Even with as much fun as I had on vacation last week, I was still very excited to get back to game night on Tuesday.  Despite getting there later than I would have liked (it was nearly 7pm), I still had a great evening.  In total, I got in 5 different games, 3 of which were new to me!

Toledo

Toledo is our new Game of the Month! for September, and this was the first time that I've played it with more than two players.  It started off with us placing out all our businesses, as I'm sure it pretty much always will.  When that was over and the game really got started, Alton had this crazy turn that seemed to go on forever, having multiple cards of one number and then landing on a tavern or two that let him draw into even more of that same number.  Thankfully, all he really did was move one pawn along pretty far towards the fortress and do a little card masturbation, so Chip and I weren't too far behind.

We then all got into the swing of picking up supplies, and we all took one of the extra movement training tiles as well.  I saw that we were all getting close to having enough resources to build one of the big swords, so I took the opportunity on my turn to go ahead and build the 11-point sword (using 3 steel and 3 jewels) and deliver it to the Alcazar.  A few turns later, Chip took the 15-point sword, while Alton tried to get both 8-pointers.    

As we moved into the endgame, I had some trouble with my cards (as in, at one point I held a 6-card straight!).  If you're not familiar with Toledo, this really sucks because on your turn you can play as many cards as you want to move your pawns as long as they all have the same value.  Thankfully, I was able to use my extra movement tile (which lets you play one extra card of a different value each turn) and draw into a few multiples to get both a 4-point and a 5-point sword built and delivered to the Alcazar to end the game.  Being the only player to deliver all 3 swords made the difference for me, and I actually won!

Time: 29 minutes
Score: Me 18, Chip 16, Alton 13
Ratings: Me 7.5, Chip 9, Alton 9

Toledo doesn't get a lot of respect, and I'm not sure why.  It's a very solid hand- and resource-management game, and you can't argue with a 30ish-minute play time.  Maybe it's just because people expect so games with a lot of depth from Martin Wallace, but for the commitment, I'm pretty impressed with it.  I will, however, be interested in seeing how it holds up throughout the month.

Tribune: Primus Inter Pares

Finally, I managed to get Tribune back to the table.  While I've played it 5 times before, I don't think that any of them have been with the full 5-players, so it was pretty cool to do so this week.  We chose to make it a "long" game, and picked the Alea Iacta Est victory condition card, but it still only lasted 51 minutes, which is one of the most freaking awesome things about this game.  But anyway, on to the report... 

Based on my opening cards and what everyone else started doing, I saw an early opportunity to get a Tribune through controlling the Legates, Plebians, and Patricians, which I managed to do on turn 2.  Unfortunately, I blew my wad of cards doing it and had a tough time building back up.  On the last turn, I really needed to win the Senators in order to be competitive (which would have given me my 4th control marker and 8th laurel, which would have been two more conditions).  Unfortunately, my 4-card, 20-something point combination wasn't enough to take when Chip played out his 5-card set that included the senate leader.  But in the end, I would have lost either way; my loss was just far more spectacular this way.

Meanwhile, the only new player, Mark, was just going nuts over there.  He picked up legions from the Gladiators and Praetorians, got the favor of the gods from the Vestal Virgins and also controlled the Senators for a turn to end up with a Tribune as well, controlled 4 factions throughout the game (obviously), and collected enough money from the catacombs using the Gladiators that he also had 25 denarii.  That totals up to 5 victory conditions... in his first freaking game... when he only needed 4 to win.  Most new players are pretty lost in their first play of Tribune, but he just totally grokked what to do, and slapped up around doing it.       

Time: 51 minutes
Score: Mark 5, Alton 3 Chip 3, Chris 3, Me 1
Ratings: Mark 8, Alton 8.5, Chip 8.5, Chris 8.5, Me 9

Unfortunately, Tribune is so fast, intense, and thought-provoking that I forgot to take any pictures (the one above is a "stock" photo)and can't remember what other people did.  I've talked about it a lot before (so I won't do so now), and Tribune is simply one of my favorite games of all time. 

Revolution!

I hadn't really heard much about this new Steve Jackson game before, and was a little hesitant about giving it a try.  Other than my beloved Illuminati (which I love more out of nostalgia than actual quality reasons), I find most other SJ games to be pretty shallow and pointless (if you'll remember my recent rant about Munchkin).  But Revolution! had seen several plays over the last couple of weeks, and the theme sounded cool enough for me to let down my guard and feel it out a little.

Basically, the game is an area-majority scoring system driven by a blind-bid, resource-allocation auction.  Every player has an identical board that lists 12 important people in the city, and on each turn, you have at least 5 gold and/or force and/or blackmail tokens that you secretly assign however you like to try and influence them.  All the boards are revealed at the same time, and whoever makes the best bid for each of these characters gets to use their benefit.  Force always trumps any other bid, and blackmail trumps gold, but gold is way easier to get.  Plus, some of the personalities can't be influenced by force and/or blackmail, so you gotta use cash.  As far as the area-majority scoring goes, some of the characters allow you to place one of your influence cubes in one of the different buildings on the board.  Some may give you extra bidding tokens to use the next round; some just give you victory points, and some give other cool benefits (like moving or replacing influence cubes).    

I didn't really mean to get into an explanation of the rules there, but that will hopefully give you at least a little taste of what's going on in the game.  Revolution! is chaotic as all get out, but I think that you generally have enough information about other players' resources (since you have to announce what you have at the beginning of each turn), the status of the board, and the relative strength of the people you're influencing to be able to make informed guesses.  

As far as our game actually went, I once again sucked in a most royal way.  Chris managed to get an advantage in the number of bidding tokens he had early in the game, and started to steadily pull away from the rest of us in placing influence on the board.  Brad hung with him through consistently influencing the Printer, which gave him 10 points straight up each turn.  But in the end, Chris' dominance of the board scored him 150 extra points as he ran away with it.

Time: 33 minutes
Score: Chris 212, Brad 127, Chip 95, Me 79
Ratings: Chris 9, Brad 8, Chip 7.5, Me 8
 
I actually rated it a 7.5 the other night, but my opinion of Revolution! has increased as I've thought more about it.  Some on BGG have complained that it's too random, but in fact, it's not random at all.  Everything in the game is controlled by the actions of the players.  Unfortunately, sometimes you don't make the right predictions about what other players will do, and it can certainly feel like luck is against you.  Still, there's a lot to this game, especially since it also has an incredibly brief play time, and I hope to have the chance to figure it out more through play over the next few weeks.

FITS

While Chris has owned this SdJ nominee for a month or so, this was the first time I'd actually been able to join in a session.  It played pretty much exactly as I thought it would, and I ended up losing by only one single point!  I wanted to slap Alton from time to time, because he wasn't actually in the game, but he kept coaching Brad (our eventual winner) throughout every round.  Brad was new to the game, but so was I, and Brad would probably have done pretty well on his own.

Time: 28 minutes
Score: Brad 19, Me 18, Chip 14, Chris 11
Ratings: Brad 8, Me 7, Chip 8.5, Chris 7.5

I like FITS well enough, but there's just not a lot here to spark my imagination.  I'll play it and have a good time when I do, but the only reason I'd ever buy it would be if I though Gwen would really enjoy it.


My "before" and "after" in round 4.
Ra: The Dice Game

I had heard a lot of mixed reviews about the Ra Dice Game, so I wanted to give it a try to see for myself what it was about.  For good or bad, I had just listened to Scott Nicholson's "Red Light" review of it in On Board Games episode #38 just that afternoon, so I had been primed with lots of criticism going into the game.

In the second epoch, Chip jumped out to a considerable lead through getting the Pharaoh lead and having a number of flooded Nile spaces.  Other than that, everything else was nip and tuck. 

Time: 45 minutes
Score: Chip 51, Brad 41, Me 39, Denise 36
Ratings: Chip 8.5, Brad 7, Me 6, Denise 8.5

But does Ra: The Dice Game suck?  I guess it depends on what you're looking for.  It's fun in a light, "Yahtzee with some more interesting choices" kind of way.  But while it doesn't get my ire up as much as it did for Scott Nicholson, I totally see all of his points, pretty much all of which are a result of comparing it to "real" Ra.  

First of all, you strip out the heart of Ra, the auctions, and replace them with Yahtzee.  In doing so, you lose almost all of the player interaction, tension, and inherent equality of the game.  Instead of having everyone involved in virtually every turn, players now have to just sit and wait for their turn with the dice.  Plus, there's not a significant time savings from the regular game to this dice version (which is usually one advantage of these type of conversions).  And finally, the tracking of what you've collected and how to score it actually seems more confusing in the dice game than in the original (especially how to claim and score monuments).

All that being said, I did actually have a good time with the game.  And I could totally see this as a great alternative to Ra for solo or 2-player play.  But with 3 or more, I think that I'd almost always prefer the original.

And that was the end of my game night.  I thought it was pretty cool that all five of the games I was in took less than an hour to play.  And I look forward to getting many of them to table again soon!

Other Games Played

Catan Geographies: Germany
Time: 35 minutes
Score: Alton 10, Chris 7, Chris W 7, Mark 6
Ratings: Alton 9, Chris 8, Chris W 9, Mark 8.5

Race for the Galaxy
Time: 22 and 22 minutes
Game 1: Chris 45, Alton 44
Game 2: Chris 63, Mark 51, Alton 33, Chris W 16
Ratings: Chris 10, Mark 8, Alton 10, Chris W 9

Revolution!
Time: 29 minutes
Score: Chris 255, Chris W 150, Mark 122
Ratings: Chris 9, Chris W 9, Mark 8.5