Remnants of the aforementioned blizzard drastically affected attendance at this week's game night.  As I arrived (pretty much at my normal 6:30ish time), only Alton and Chris were present, squaring off in a head-to-head battle over Claustrophobia.  I didn't really pay much attention to the mechanics of the game, but the pieces looked nice, and both of them seemed to have a good time.  Maybe I'll be able to give this a try sometime in the near future as well...

Time: 29 and 38 minutes
Score: Chris - 2 wins, Alton - 0 wins
Ratings: Chris 7.5, Alton 8.5

Carson City

As I mentioned last week, Carson City is the first Game of the Month! that I neither own nor have ever played.  So while I had downloaded and read the rules once, I spent my time waiting for Alton and Chris in setting up Alton's copy of the game and re-reading the rules.  Denise joined us as well, and we got to right to playing once Chris' humans valiantly overcame the forces of hell.

Anyway, Chris jumped out to an early lead by building a couple of ranches and doubling their payment in the first two rounds using the Grocer.  I chose the Chinese Coolie and bought a mine and a drugstore.  On round 2, I took the Mercenary so as to not get picked on, and built a saloon that made me some good money.  Unfortunately, I basically just forgot to place a cowboy on one of the "buy VP" spaces, and had to discard $24 for only 2 VP.  Thankfully, it didn't make a difference in the end of the game, but I was still getting my head around how money and VP's worked at that point.  

Chris became a total bully from that point on, taking the Mercenary on the last two turns and stealing half of my Saloon income (doubled by the Grocer) on turns 3 and 4.  Alton made a big land-grab on turn 2, but didn't make them pay off very well until the last turn.  Denise got turned around a bit in her strategy, and didn't do much of anything until the last turn, when she practically founded another whole neighborhood of the town.  In the end, though, Alton and Denise couldn't make enough of a surge, and Chris' bullying ways were enough to edge me out for the win.       

Time: 84 minutes
Score: Chris 50, Me 43, Alton 35, Denise 29
Ratings: Chris 7, Me 7.5, Alton 8.5, Denise 8.5

The first positive point about this game was that it took less than 90 minutes.  I was getting worried when I saw that some of the previous games had taken 2 hours or more.  But I think that 90ish minutes is very appropriate for what goes on in the game, and I'll be happy if it stays there (or maybe even gets a bit faster).

By the end of turn 2, I had a good handle on how the game worked.  It's not entirely clear at first what all the spaces do, and I clearly didn't completely understand the relationship of money to VP's before then.  But I still didn't make too many mistakes, and was able to build on my early choices to do pretty well overall.  Chris' strategy looked really solid, and even when I got a lucky die roll to take the 3 guns token from him on turn 4, it still didn't really affect his overall plan.  Alton's strategy was a lot more subtle, but I still think that I picked up what he was mainly trying to do.  And in the end, I'm walking away from my first play of Carson City with a lot of ideas about how to play it next time.  Right now, though, I'm very happy with its selection as GotM!, and I can't wait to play it again!


Chris was Brown, Alton was Yellow, Denise was Orange, and I was Green
Blue Moon City

James had arrived sometime during Carson City, so he took Denise's place when we moved on to playing Blue Moon City.  This was only my second play of the game (with just over 2 years between), and my impression after the first play was that it was pretty mediocre.  I played along anyway, and ended up having a really good time!  Of course, it's always nice when you win (as I did in this case), but the gameplay itself really felt solid to me regardless of that. 

Time: 37 minutes
Score: Me 4, Chris 3, Alton 2, James 2
Ratings: Me 7.5, Chris 0, Alton 8.5, James 8

Blue Moon City went straight onto my wishlist after this play.  It's very simple to understand, but I like how your options narrow through the game while your time and ability to plan for them increases.  It also pretty much requires some level of cooperation between players to construct (and therefore score) the different buildings.  In the end of our game, for instance, Chris completed a building I had started in the very early game, which ended up giving me the crystals I needed to make my last contribution.  But I was only able to win at that time, however, by holding on to one of the cards that let me have extra movement.  Of course, there's always going to be a healthy dose of luck in a card-driven game like this, but you're drawing and using so many cards, and there are so many ways to use cards in multiple ways, that it doesn't seem to be an inappropriate amount of luck.  So I'd definitely be up for playing it again sometime. 


I'm blue, of course...
Dominion

Chris was looking for something relatively short, so we pulled out Dominion next.  As I've said before, Dominion never got a lot of love from the Hypermind BoardGamers; Race for the Galaxy has too strong a stranglehold on most of the gamers here to make room for another euro-ish cardgame.  And since it had been so long for the other guys, we just played the "first game" setup again.

There's not much to say about a game of Dominion, though, other than the fact that Alton and I ended up tying for the win.  I went for a Militia or two early on, but otherwise stuck mainly to Villages, Smithys, and Mines.  Alton should have won, but didn't buy some of the lesser VP-value scoring cards when he had the chance because he didn't think the game would end as soon as it did. 

Time: 37 minutes
Score: Alton 33, Me 33, Chris 28, James 13
Ratings: Alton 8, Me 7.5, Chris 6.5, James 7

As my interest in RftG has waned, my desire to play Dominion has definitely been on the upswing.  Maybe some of us can dedicate a bit more time with it at some game nights, and perhaps we can even try out an expansion or two.  I don't want to increase my investment in it too much right now, but that may be something to think about if things work out.


The Settlers of Catan

I've been playing a lot of the Catan app on my iPod lately, so when we were trying to decide what to do next after Chris headed home, I suggested that we pull out this venerable classic.  I knew that Alton would be up for it (since he's like married to Settlers or something), but James was pretty interested in giving it a go as well.  He was a little less excited when the game got going, however, and "whiny James" came out in full force.

Of course, it made some sense for James to be whiny, becauase while he was sucking serious root in the game, I was running away with it.  I got to place first, and picked an 8,5,10 spot for clay,sheep, and stone.  When it came back to me, I chose a 6 (sheep), 3 (wood), 11 (grain) spot.  And then in the first few rounds, I was able to build into the sheep port near my first settlement and never looked back.  Despite Alton building a 9-length road, I was able to end the game by connecting up my settlements and claiming longest road with a 12-section chain.

Time: 40 minutes
Score: Me 10, Alton 6, James 5
Ratings: Me 7, Alton 10, James 8

Settlers is still a solid game.  But unfortunately, most of the game is over by the time you place your initial settlements.  There are certainly some choices to make later on, but they are largely governed by the rolls of the dice.  In this case, the dice were with me.

Archaeology: The Card Game

I picked up Archaeology: The Card Game and Escalation! for Christmas, and wanted to get the former to the table for the first time (since owning it, anyway), so we chose this as our closer for the evening.  I was doing respectably for a while, but then Alton and James got the maps they needed to go into the pyramid and it was all over for me.

Time: 14 minutes
Score: Alton 90, James 72, Me 56
Ratings: Alton 8.5, James 7, Me 6.5

I really like the way that this game plays, but the influence of the Pyramid is just too strong.  And I promise that I'm not just saying that because I lost to it.  Of course, in a 14-minute game, having a big swing of luck isn't that big a deal.  I would be interested to see if anyone has come up with a variant to ignore or tweak the maps/pyramid thing, though, just to see if the game would be even better.

So, in the end, we had an "intimate" (as in "small", not something dirty like "in our underwear") game night this week.  Hopefully, the next round of predicted wintery weather won't bother us too much, because I don't know if I can forgive all those wussy people if they skipped two weeks in a row just because they didn't want to risk death behind the wheel.  But I'll put aside my bitterness and disappointment in them for the time being, and wish you all a good week!