When I arrived to game night this Tuesday, the Race for the Galaxy festivities were already over, and a session of our new Game of the Month!, Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, was in progress.  I had thought some about possibilities for the musical theme to go along with this game, and in the end decided on Gary Jules' Mad World.  Not only do I really like the song, but I also figured that any group of civilizations run by the jokers in this group would certainly result in one "very, very mad world".

Dixit

Eventually, I got the chance to actually play a game.  We had 6 people ready for action, so Chris pulled out Dixit, and we got to it!  Chip and Brad walked in almost immediately after we started, but we didn't feel so bad since the game is so short.  Despite totally whiffing on his first turn and being left behind at the start, Kenny powered through most of the game and took the win by a slim margin over Chris.

Time: 30 minutes
Score: Ken 35, Chris 32, Me 26, Mark 24, Alton 21, Adam 19
Ratings: Ken 9, Chris 8.5, Me 7.5, Mark 7.5, Alton 7.5, Adam 8

I continue to have a really good time with Dixit, and I plan to introduce it to some friends at church and in my family over the holiday season.  We all had a good time, but then we needed to get down to some serious gaming bid-niz...

Roll Through the Ages

Since half of us had missed playing the new GotM!, we sat down and gave it another play.  In the first game, I used a pretty balanced approach and ended up winning on the strength of having 7 cities and the Empire development.  I also built the great pyramid and another monument, and did a good job of limiting disasters.

Time: 40 minutes
Score: Me 29, Chip 27, Mark 20, Alton 12
Ratings: Me 8, Chip 8.5, Mark 8, Alton 8.5

For our second game, we actually pulled out copies of the Late Bronze Age expansion.  Alton won this one handily after putting together the combo of Quarrying and Engineering to generate 31 workers in one turn and complete a metric crap-ton of monuments.  It was pretty darn impressive.

Time: 50 minutes
Score: Alton 47, Chip 33, Me 29, Mark 28
Ratings: Alton 8.5, Chip 8, Me 7.5, Mark 8

Overall, Roll Through the Ages is a very solid game.  Right now, I think that I definitely like the base game better than the expansion for multiplayer games.  I like the additional choices that it brings, but I don't like the extra length and how it seems to slow the endgame especially.  But I also have a feeling that it might be better for solo play, which I need to explore some over the next little while.

Word on theStreet
     
Denise and Chris were looking at Word on the Street, so Chip and I joined them to give it a try.  I've heard some really good buzz about this as a solid word game (mainly from Scott Nicholson), but I wanted to try it out before I pulled the trigger on buying it. 

Basically, you pull a card on your turn that has some description on it.  Your team has to come up with any word that meets this description, and then spell it out.  For each consonant in the word (with a few exceptions), you pull that letter's tile one space closer to you.  If you can pull a letter three spaces from the center, you keep it for the rest of the game.  But if you can't get it off the board, the other team can use it in one of their words and pull it back towards them.  So you get this interesting tug-of-war going on until one team gets 8 of the letters off their side of the board.

In practice, and especially playing with only 2-person teams, it was really hard.  We didn't even play with the 30-second timer, and it was still really difficult to come up with words that actually pulled the letters you wanted.  And as the game went on and less letters were available, it really slowed down and drug on.  In the end, Denise and I made a good rally, but Chip and Chris managed to use "Bubblegum" to pull the B three spaces and win the game.

Time: 41 minutes
Score: Chip & Chris - 8, Denise and Me - 7
Ratings: Chip 5, Chris 6.5, Denise ?, Me 6

Word on the Street wasn't really a bad party game, but it wasn't a lot of fun for us either.  I doubt that I'll pick it up myself, but if I were to get it for Christmas, I also wouldn't be upset or anything.  With a larger group with 4 or 5 people on teams, I bet it would be a lot faster and easier, and that it would have a much greater fun factor. 

El Grande

El Grande is a game that I just didn't have a very good experience with the first couple of times I played it.  But over the last month or two, Chip and I discussed it a couple of times, and we realized that both of those other plays involved a player who is very prone to analysis paralysis and tends to really drag out the length of most games he's involved in.  We wondered if that might have helped paint El Grande in a worse light than it deserves, and thought that it would be a good idea to give it another try based on its incredible reputation in the boardgaming community.  We finally did so on Tuesday night... and I am freaking glad that we did!

It was already getting late (about quarter after 10pm), but we had five players available and El Grande was on my mind.  I suggested it, and with Chip's support, Alton, Brad, and Kenny agreed to join us.  I hadn't really read through the rules very recently, so I carefully went through the setup and rules with everyone, hopefully in a way that wasn't too boring or erratic.  But as soon as we got into the first round, things went very smoothly.  

After just the first scoring round, I was in the lead with Chip nipping at my heels.  He had done a really good job of having presence all over the board and picked up at least a point or two in most regions.  I managed to get majority in a few of the regions in the corners, and also "spread it around" some as well.  Kenny caught on quickly as well, but Brad and Alton lagged behind a little.  The only real "issue" that I had at this time was losing control of my home region (Granada, and I was blue), which I never regained through the whole game.  

In the second scoring, I pulled away a little bit more.  Brad also started to make a really strong comeback, but Alton dropped further back (he's an old man, you know, and has trouble keeping up sometimes! )

As the end of the game approached, I did a pretty good job with managing my power cards and took the opportunity to play a special scoring action that scored the first place in every region.  It helped most of us quite a bit (probably me most of all), but more importantly, it helped me pull away specifically from Chip, who was still relying mostly on his "second place in a lot of regions" strategy.  And then in the end, I was able to keep my lead significant enough from the pack to win.

Time: 95 minutes
Score: Me 112, Chip 100, Brad 100, Ken 97, Alton 44
Ratings: Me 8, Chip 8, Brad 7, Ken 8, Alton 7

Not only did I win, but I also had a crazy good time doing it!  It's almost like I was playing a whole different game this time.  I'm sure that the group of players had a lot to do with it, but I'm also a lot more experienced with area-majority games than I was a couple of years ago, and that probably had a good deal to do with the difference as well.  But I was very, very impressed with how all of the moving parts of the game work together.  I can see a ton of potential strategy in power card management and action card selection, and clearly, there's bunches of stuff to consider when it comes to actually putting your cubes on the board (or in the tower). 

Overall, my third impression of El Grande was a total reversal of my prior opinion.  I had a lot of fun with the game, and I look forward to giving it some more attention in the near future.


Other Games Played

Race for the Galaxy
Time: 12 and 25 minutes
Game 1: Chris 68, Mark 62, Alton 48
Game 2: Chris 55, Alton 42, Mark 41
Ratings: Chris 10, Mark 10, Alton 10

Roll Through the Ages
Time: 48 minutes
Score: Adam 35, Alton 14, Chris 12, Mark 7
Ratings: Adam 8, Alton 8.5, Chris 8.5, Mark 8.5

Lost Cities: The Board Game
Time: 74 minutes
Score: Chris 380, Adam 340, Brad 270, Ken 210
Ratings: Chris 8, Adam 7, Brad 7, Ken 7.5

Unspeakable Words
Time: ?
Game 1: Adam 111, Brad 96, Alton 86, Ken - Craaaazy!
Game 2: Ken 106, Alton 70, Brad 68
Ratings: Adam 7, Ken 9, Brad 8, Alton 8