I'll take a little break from my RPG-or-Die!-Con coverage to talk about this week's boardgame night!  With the threat of adverse weather looming, I was a little worried about attendance this week.  But whether we've all just gotten used to dealing with the white stuff in our unusually severe winter her in central North Carolina, or we're just fed up with worrying about it, attendance was actually pretty darn good. 

After the early-arrivers finished a game of Can't Stop, we thought about jumping right into our new Game of the Month!  But we knew that a few people were still on the way, and instead decided to all play a game of...

Castle Panic

We had a full table of six players and were playing the standard (semi-cooperative, or as some say "coop-i-tition") game.  Things started slow, but we still took a few dings to our defenses from time to time.  And then, when the "draw 4 tiles" threat popped up, everything hit the fan.  We went into complete "cooperate or die" mode, and still it looked grim.  In the end, though, we managed to eliminate all the outside threats and the lone goblin left in our castle killed himself taking out our second-to-last tower.  Kenny and James each racked up a lot of kills early, but Chris had managed to slip in during all the chaos and steal the win.

Time: 36 minutes
Score: Chris 14, James 13, Ken 10, Alton 9, Me 7, Mark 7
Ratings: Chris 8, James 8, Ken 7.5, Alton 8, Me 7, Mark 8

I think that I like Castle Panic better with more players.  It seems to make it a bit harder, but also gives more opportunity for making decisions.  It's also hard to argue with a 30-ish minute game with this level of tension and excitement.  But I still want to try out the "Overlord" variant where one player takes control of the monsters, just to see if it takes the game to the next level.

Vegas Showdown

Vegas Showdown is, in fact, our new Game of the Month!  We had 10 people present by this time, which was perfect to completely fill 2 simultaneous games.  I did the rules teach for all the new players in both games.  In our game, I probably had the most overall experience with it, so I was able to think ahead a little better than everybody else, and ended up winning.  The way the event cards came out, we actually ran out of the medium-sized tiles way early, so our game was significantly shorter than the other one. 

Time: 53 minutes
Score: Me 41, Ken* 33, Mark 32, Alton 30, Michelle* 23
Ratings: Me 7.5, Ken 7.5, Mark 8, Alton 7.5, Michelle 7.5

Everybody was pretty pleased with the first showing of Vegas Showdown as GotM!  Kenny specifically mentioned that he wasn't looking too forward to play after hearing the rules, but that the auction mechanics drew him in and that he had a lot of fun.  Overall, I think that the game is very solid.  The components could be better, and it's a little one-dimensional when compared to a lot of games, but I'm looking forward to the rest of the month.

I'll admit that I'm also a bit hopeful that it similarity to a couple of other games may help me to get them to the table as well.  The auctions are almost identical to Amun-Re, which I've played a lot online (a couple of years ago, however) but only once in person.  It's significantly heavier in general, though, and is probably a much better game overall. 

The other game with some similarities is, of course, The Princes of Florence.  Its auction is a major component of the game (though it's not very similar in how it works), but there's also the spatial "building construction" element that appears in Vegas Showdown.  It's my favorite game, as you probably already know, and I'm always looking for more opportunities to play it more often. 

Cosmic Encounter

Most of us played a few hands of No Thanks! while we waited for the other game to wrap up (in which that wretch Alton stole the win from me in the last hand).  We then reshuffled a bit and jumped into a 6-player game of Cosmic Encounter (aided by the new Cosmic Incursion expansion from FFG).  

I played the Sniveler as my race, mainly to see how I could make its power work out.  Mostly, it just kept me in last place, so I don't think that I made a very wise choice.  Kenny and Ben jumped out to an early lead with 3 foreign bases, but Adam came on strong as well, eventually being tied with Kenny at 4.  But in a strange series of events and with a bit of nice hand-management (she had held on to the 40-strength attack card most of the game), Michelle took two bases on her last turn to win her very first play! 

Time: 84 minutes
Score: Michelle* 5, Adam* 4, Ken 4, Ben* 3, Chris 2, Me 2
Ratings: Michelle 9.5, Adam 7, Ken 8.5, Ben 8, Chris 10, Me 8

I can't remember if this was my first 6-player game of Cosmic Encounter ever, but it was definitely my first game with the Fantasy Flight version.  And my impression is that it may be a player or two too many.  I really like the extra interaction and possibility for alliances and all with more people.  But the mechanical part of the game seems to bog down a little too much.  We only made it around the table 1 and a half times, and at one point we even wondered if we'd make it around once.  And in taking so few turns, it's very easy for your hand to get clogged with undesirable cards that you can't do much about.

But still, I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope that Cosmic Encounter (hopefully with some of the new variants even) will stay in our larger rotation.   


Unspeakable Words

It had been snowing continually all afternoon and evening, so I was about ready to head home.  But I was enticed into one more game, in which we pushed the boundaries of Unspeakable Words to include 8 players.  Kenny had picked up the "Black Cthulhu" figure expansion for the game, and it worked just fine with that number (other than having to shuffle the deck pretty often). 

There was a wide disparity in dice luck around the table, though, with some people losing sanity like water through a seive, while others couldn't seem to roll below a 16.  A couple of people went crazy at 60 and 76 points, and then Ben had a heartbreaker when he lost his last sanity after scoring exactly 100 points (which would have win him the game had he not started talking to the little man that lived in his navel). 

I had crap in my hand for most of the game, being unable to form any word longer than 3 letters without invoking the variant that lets you make any word you want from the letters in your hand as long as you only have one sanity.  Of course, the first time I did this, I used all 7 of my cards and still only scored 4 points.  Then I went insane a couple of turns later.  Kenny actually used all 7 of his cards to make words... twice.  But then he went crazy too, so I didn't feel so bad about it.


Of course "scooiuu" is a real word.  It's as real as the duck sitting on my head!!!
Adam, meanwhile, rode good luck and good spelling to a solid win.

Time: 39 minutes
Score: Adam* 101, Alton 89, Michelle 84, James 76, Ben* 100+Talking to his navel, Me 96+Fascinated by the humming of the walls, Ken 76+Intimidated by the scowling of the die, Mark 60+Just freakin' looney tunes!  
Ratings: Adam 8, Alton 7.5, Michelle ?, James 8, Ben ?, Me 7, Ken 8, Mark ?

Okay, the cool thing is that we had a really great time with this game.  It's always pretty fun, but having so many people made it even better.  It moves so fast that the extra time from the other players is actually a good thing (so you can figure out what words you can spell).  I'm not sure what the upper limit on the game might actually be, but even if you don't have the "official" extra tokens, I'd definitely letting more than 6 into the game if it comes up for y'all.  

The only issue we have with the game is the same one that many of these word games have: deciding on which words are acceptable.  Kenny even mentioned maybe buying a cheap Scrabble dictionary, just to have an official "go to" reference and avoid the interruptions we have in hammering out these little conflicts.  

Other Games Played

Can't Stop!
Time: 39 minutes (for 2 games)
Game 1: Mark 3, Chris 2, James 0
Game 2: James 3, Chris 1, Mark 1, Alton 1
Ratings: Mark 8.5, James 8, Chris 9, Alton 8.5

Vegas Showdown
Time: 66 minutes
Score: Brandon* 62, Adam* 56, Chris 53, Ben* 52, James 40
Ratings: Brandon 8.5, Adam 7.5, Chris 8.5, Ben 7, James 8

No Thanks!
Time: 18 minutes (for 3 hands)
Score: Alton 67, Michelle 75, Me 77, Mark 83, Ken 162 (yep, he really sucked in all 3 hands)
Ratings: Alton 8, Michelle 9, Me 8, Mark 8.5, Ken 8

Race for the Galaxy
Time: ?
Score: Alton - 3 wins, Mark - 1 win, James - No wins
Ratings: Alton 10, Mark 10, James... you guessed it, a 10

* First play of the game