I managed to get to game night a little early again this week, but I spent the time working out details of our 3rd Anniversary Party with Denise instead of actually playing anything.

Skyline 3000

Graham was able to make it this week (and hopefully will make the party as well), and he brought with him the spankin' new Z-Man release Skyline 3000.  I had heard a few nice things about the original version, Capitol, and even downloaded (but didn't read) the rules from Z-Man's website, so I was more than happy to jump in and check it out.

None of us were quite sure what kind of strategy to use as we got started, but Graham, Alton, and I all got neighborhoods tied up with us in the majority early on.  Chris mostly seemed to have a "tag-along" approach where he was getting second-place points almost everywhere, though, and so we all stayed pretty close together.  Alton managed to pull way into the lead when he won the shopping-mall-thingy on the third turn and doubled the score of his biggest area.  I, meanwhile, overcommitted in the first three rounds and left myself absolutely nothing that I could do in the last.  I was able to win the auction for the second mall, but it wasn't enough to keep me competitive, and so I ended up in last place.

Time: 65 minutes
Score: Alton 70, Chris 57, Graham 53 (+), Me 53 (-)
Ratings: Alton 8, Chris 7.5, Graham 7.5, Me 7

Overall, Skyline 3000 was pretty fun.  I definitely like the look of the game (both in art and the chunky, wooden building pieces), although I question the need for the re-theme.  Frankly, I think the Roman setting fits a little better.  But while it's certainly a solid family-weight game, I just wonder how much long-term depth the game would have.  From this first play, I'd say that the doubled scoring from the mall seems pretty unbalancing, especially on the third turn.  I could be wrong, and there's nothing really limiting anyone from being able to bid for it, but I just worry whether the game might always come down to whoever wins the bid winning the game. I welcome another few plays of the game, but it's not going on my wishlist right yet.

Endeavor 

By then, we had 10 gamers ready to go and two copies of our Game of the Month!, Endeavor.  Alton and Mark jumped ship to play that blasted Race for the Galaxy game, and the rest of us split into two 4-player games.  Just as I was getting into the rules review, though, TomG walked in as well!  He jumped right in and we got started.

Feeling secure in my manhood after winning the last game I played, I decided to try something different and chose the Market as my first building.  I promptly "went there" and drew the first Slavery card to see how it might work out.  By the end of the game, I found out that slavery just doesn't pay.  Of course, there were a lot of other decisions I made along the way that could probably have also been better, but even when slavery isn't abolished (which did not happen in this game), holding those slavery cards (and the negative point they convey if discarded) seems like it will always be a detriment when you will have the chance to draw better cards later on.  

Adam, Tom, and Kenny, however, did a great job of getting their dudes onto the board and building connections.  I worked actively to disrupt both Tom and Adam, but was distracted more by Kenny's card drawing and didn't notice the strength of his network until the end. 

Time: 80 minutes
Score: Ken 60, Tom 52, Adam 52, Me 43, Graham 38
Ratings: Ken 8, Tom 8, Adam 8, Me 8, Graham 5.5


Tom, Kenny, Graham, and Adam... and then my large stack of dudes which I tried to use to
compensate for my lack of potency in the actual game.

We played Endeavor a couple of times when it was released, but made the decision early on that it would be a Game of the Month! at some point, so we've pretty much laid off it since then.  After this play, I remember why I like it so much.  There are a ton of decisions to make, both strategically and tactically, and they really do seem to have significance later on.  You've got tons of player interaction, in all different forms, but it never really feels like it would degenerate into a "take sides and fight" wargame.  It's way abstracted, of course, but I still get a nice sense of the theme, and it seems like a heck of a lot of game to fit into 60-90 minutes.

I've heard some complain about it being too plain and uninteresting, but I just don't get that at all.  Heck, just thinking and writing about it now makes me want to increase my rating already and play it again right now!  Graham said that it didn't jive with him at all, though, so maybe this is one of those games that just comes down to a matter of taste in your game preferences.  But then again, Graham really likes Carcassonne, so how much can you really trust what he thinks? :p

Pandemic

I've been wanting to play Pandemic with Tom for months, so that was my next suggestion.  Kenny, Steve, and Brad joined us, and we decided to play with the Mutation Strain challenge and 5 Epidemic cards.  Red was pretty ugly early on, but we focused on it a lot and eventually eradicated it.  In fact, this was one of those cases where we thought we had the thing whooped, so Pandemic (as in, the spirit which inhabits every copy of the game and guides the seemingly random occurrences occurring within it) became angry and decided to teach us a lesson.  I shall focus on the last meaningful turn of the game to show you how. 

I was the Archivist, who can draw a card from the discard pile as an action (if he's in the matching city).  We had cured every disease except for blue, and I was holding three blue cards in my hand.  The St. Petersburg card was in the discard pile, and I was in Essen (right next door to St.P).  We knew that Essen hadn't been drawn yet, and we were hoping that Kenny would draw it on his turn so that I could take it from him.  Brad (the Ops Expert) built a research station in St. Petersburg, so I could cure the disease there.  Just before Kenny was about to go, however, Steve drew Essen on his turn.  We looked closely and realized that Milan was also still in the draw pile, so Kenny made sure that he was there at the end of his turn, and he did, in fact, draw Milan.

My turn therefore looked like this:
1) Move from Essen to St. Petersburg
2) Take the St. Petersburg card from the discard pile
3) Move to Milan (where there was also a research station, by the way)
4) Take the Milan card from Kenny

And we ran out of cards before I got another turn.  So, I was holding the cure, in a city with a research station, one action short of winning the game.  We realized that if Steve (the Dispatcher) had moved me to St. Petersburg or himself to Essen with just one of his actions, we would have won.  If anyone was holding the Airlift or Borrowed Time special event cards, we would have won the game.  Chances are, if we had backed off treating diseases and not bothered sunsetting red, we would have won the game.  But as it was, we were one action short and the humanity died a horrible and pustulent death        



Time: 50 minutes
Score: Pandemic - WIN; Inefficient Humans (Brad, Ken, Steve, Tom, and Me) - DEAD
Ratings: Brad 9, Ken 10, Steve 9, Tom 10, Me 10

We all had a great time and were talking about how much we loved playing the game, so we reshuffled and took another shot at it.  This time, we included both Mutation and Virulent Strain challenges, but went with only 4 Epidemics.  As opposed to the last game, things looked very grim from turn 2 or 3, when we had our first Epidemic and it looked like the world was teetering on the edge.  At one point, we had a couple of Mutation cards and events come out back to back, and we were down to just one purple cube remaining.  But somehow, we turned the tide, fought back the darkness, and cured the fifth disease on the last action of the last player in the game.

Time: 45 minutes
Score: Valiant, Brainy Humans (Brad, Ken, Steve, Tom, and Me) - WIN!; Pandemic - LOSE
Ratings: Brad 9, Ken 10, Steve 9, Tom 9, Me 10

It's just another testament to how fun, challenging, dramatic, and incredibly well-balanced Pandemic really is.  

Man Bites Dog

It was getting on towards 11pm at that point, but a few of us wanted at least another tad bit of gaming before we called it a night.  So I pulled out Man Bites Dog, a light party-style card game about building funny headlines.  Brad, Kenny, and I played once, and then Alton and Josh joined us for a second game.  It was a total hoot, even though the game is really all luck as far as game play goes.  You get 5 cards, then can discard up to 3 of them and redraw.   Everyone then builds the best headline they can and scores the points listed on the cards they used.  If you play an "Exclusive" card, you double your score. 

Time: 15 and 10 minutes
Game 1: Me 675, Ken 550, Brad 340
Game 2: Ken 525, Brad 480, Alton 410, Me 375, Josh 255
Ratings: Ken 7.5, Me 7, Brad 8, Alton 7.5, Josh 7.5

I think that the ratings were definitely inflated a little, and that the game wouldn't really stand up to repeated play.  But if you're looking for something really light to pull out every once in a while just for a good laugh, this is really hard to beat.  In fact, I think that everyone else in the game wanted to know where I got it so that they could get a copy as well.


Some of our headline highlights!
Other Games Played

Carson City
Time: 120 minutes
Score: Adam 39(+), Josh 39(-), Alton 34, Chris 33, Chip 30
Ratings: Adam 8, Josh 8, Alton 8.5, Chris 7.5, Chip 7

Endeavor
Time: 60 minutes
Score: Brad 60, Chris 57, Steve 56, Chip 53
Ratings: Brad 8, Chris 8.5, Steve 8, Chip 7.5

Race for the Galaxy
Time: 110 minutes (for 5 games)
Score: Mark - 3 wins, Alton - 2 wins
Ratings: Mark 10, Alton 10

Roll Through the Ages
Time: 15 minutes
Score: Ken 19, Steve 16
Ratings: Ken 8, Steve 8

Thebes
Time: 40 minutes
Score: Adam 101, Mark 87
Ratings: Adam 7.5, Mark 8