This was an interesting week for the Hypermind Boardgamers.  First and foremost, we were thrilled to have Richard, a guest from Vienna, join us for dinner and some gaming.  He came to the U.S. for BGG.con and is making a slow tour of the southeast and atlantic states, eventually making it up to New York before heading back to Austria.  He found us through a post he put up on BGG a few months ago, where he asked about any possible gaming opportunities during his travels.  I responded, and through some correspondance since then, we worked it out for him to join us this week.

I, Charles, and Kenny took him out to a nice local restaurant (the Village Grill, if you're interested), and had some awesome food and equally excellent conversation.  But we didn't get together just for food, and soon made our way back to Hypermind to play some games!  

Hansa Teutonica [BGG]

Hansa Teutonica is our new Game of the Month!, so a few of us jumped right into it to get started.  Richard and Sceadeau have played several times, and Charles has really grokked it after just a couple of games.  Shawn and I were only on our second game, though, and it showed pretty badly.

Sceadeau launched into what I will henceforth refer to as the "butthole strategy" (a label for the strategy, not its user, just to be clear), where you focus more on blocking other people early on, forcing them to displace you and therefore giving you extra cubes on the board, which you then use to teleport/paratroop in wherever you want.  He then transitioned into developing a significant network of cities that scored 21 points at the end of the game.

Charles focused on getting up to 5 actions, and then went after bonus tiles like a monkey on a cupcake.  He did gain control of a few cities, though, and kept placing the new bonus tiles between them, so he also got a lot of feedback going from that as well to score boo-koodles of points.  In the end, his 15 points from bonus tiles added to everything else he had accumulated to that point pushed him ahead for the win.

Richard did fine, since he obviously has a lot of knowledge about the game.  Shawn and I, however... not so much.  Shawn got a boost early on by placing an office in the city that increases you actions (since he would get a point every time someone else did so).  He misunderstood some things about the board and its routes, though, and got set back significantly because of it. 

I... well, I just don't know what the heck I was doing all game long.  Mostly, I suppose I was being incredibly inefficient.  I thought that I'd pursue the priviledge track a little, but it just took so long and people seemed to be getting things done way faster than I was.  Near the end, I made a little effort to get a merchant into Coellen to salvage my score a bit, and would have had another one there if the game had gone on another couple of turns.  But Charles took care of that by finishing up all the bonus tiles, so this game turned out to pretty much be an epic fail on my part.   

Time: 58 minutes
Score: Charles 44, Sceadeau 37, Richard 28, Shawn 17, Me 15
Ratings: Charles 10, Sceadeau 10, Richard 10, Shawn 7, Me 8

Wow, I reallty got my heiney handed to me.  Rarely have I ever felt so completely left behind while playing a game.  I did go last, so some of the pre-planned ideas I had about strategy were somewhat disrupted, but more than anything, I think I suffered because I never really committed to anything in particular.  I've read a little bit online about some basic strategies, and hope that I'll be able to execute a little more competently next week.  But I'm still really excited and intrigued by Hansa Teutonica, and can't wait to learn more about it!

Coloretto [BGG]

I then got to introduce my newest filler, Coloretto, still fresh from the Secret-Santa sleigh.  I was able to introduce it to Shawn, Richard and Chip for the first time, and they loved it as much as Charles and I already do.  Coloretto could definitely have a place among our all-time favorite fillers at this pace. 

Time: 15 minutes
Score: Shawn* 26, Richard* 23, Charles 19, Me 19, Chip* 18
Ratings: Shawn 8, Richard 8.5, Charles 10, Me 8, Chip 8

Samurai [BGG]

Richard was interested in playing some more American-style games that he doesn't have as much access to at home, so he and Kenny peeled off to play last month's GotM!, Memoir '44.  Chip and I took some time to go ahead and put together a PitchCar track for later, and then we tried to all figure out what to play next.  Chris and Chip decided to learn Perry Rhodan with John the Z-Man demo guy, and the rest of us pulled out Samurai.

Everyone had actually played at least once before, but all of my opponents were still pretty new to the game.  We used a random draw for our initial hand, and I had some really crappy and ineffective tiles to start with.  After a turn or two, I got one of my 4-strength tiles and decided to make a run for Edo (the 3-piece city) since no one had done so yet.  Charles and Shawn came to play with me some on the big island after that, but I was still able to pluck several of the pieces I wanted.

I ended up winning on the "most other pieces" tiebreaker against Charles, but I was one rice field away from winning the game outright with 2 majorities (the other being high helmets).    

Time: 46 minutes
Score: Me - 1 majority+6 pieces, Charles - 1 majority+2 pieces, Shawn - 9 pieces, Keith - 8 pieces
Ratings: Me 8.5, Charles 8, Shawn 8, Keith 8

The 4-player game is definitely chaotic.  You still have to have a plan, but it's probably even more important to look for opportunities for easy scores.  I know that I sniped at least two pieces from other people who had left them wide-open and vulnerable, and did a decent job of protecting my own areas.  Samurai is definitely a game about not setting up the next player, and for the most part, everyone had a good handle on that by the end of the game.  

Samurai is definitely continuing to rise for me, even after this long, and I think that it will continue to get better as more people at game night become familiar with it. 

PitchCar [BGG]

At this point, most everyone left in the store joined together in a couple of games of PitchCar.  It was a total blast, and my love of this game has definitely been rekindled over Thanksgiving and then again this evening.  But rather than a wordy rundown, let me tell some of the story in pictures...


This picture is mainly here to show the layout of the track.  Chip (in the background) has the first two (?) extension sets, so we included the jump and a few of the split-track curves (which was one of the recommended setups). 

The first difficulty was the split-track curve immediately beyond the starting line.  It led directly into a straightaway that had a curved channel in its center, but which didn't leave enough room to get around on the outside.  So everyone had to pass through the small bottleneck in the bottom-right of the picture in order to proceed.


Turns went quick, and one of the coolest things about PItchCar is this little dance that you do as you move around the table.  Of course, it would have gone even quicker and smoother if Kenny hadn't insisted on trying to punch out his new copy of Battle Cry between his turns...


Here we see Richard trying to make a move on Keith (yellow) and me (green) in the first race.  Despite making the "shot of his life", I still managed to keep ahead of him for the win.


Charles isn't very good at flicking.  Once winning no longer became a possibility in both races, he looked for other challenges to keep him occupied.  In addition to making some backwards flicks intentionally to hinder the leaders (who were lapping him at the time), he also worked hard to make the "impossible" inside passage on the straightaway I mentioned earlier.  After several attempts, he sort of accidentally got his car to flip on its side and roll along the rail, succeeding where all others had failed!

And for the first time that I've ever seen, we had some serious car-on-car action take place due to the ramp.  No one knew what to do until John the Z-Man guy (who is good for rules to non-Z-Man games as well) explained that since it wasn't touching the track, the car on top had technically crashed.
I managed to pull of the win in the second race as well, which I'll attribute to my moderate flicking practice on my Carrom board.  But when you had the kind of fun we had the whole time, it doesn't matter much who comes in first.

Time: 44 and 48 minutes
Game 1: Me - 1st, Richard - 2nd, Keith* - 3rd, Then everyone else (Charles*, Chip and Kenny*)  
Game 2: Me - 1st, John the Z-Man Guy - 2nd*, Chip - 3rd, Then everyone else (Charles, Keith, Kenny and Richard)
Ratings: Me 9, Richard 10, John 8, Keith 7, Chip 9, Kenny 8, Charles 1 (again, he isn't very good at flicking, but I guarantee that he had a lot more fun playing the game with us than this "1" would indicate)

Now I just need some extensions!

Jungle Speed [BGG]

I've owned Jungle Speed for a long time, but after bringing it to game night a couple of times, it sort of got lost in my car.  When I traded in my car a couple of weeks ago, I found it again and brought it along with me this week.  I had read the rules, but Richard had played several times, so he was able to bring us all up to speed, so to speak.  Of course, he still kicked our butts.

Time: 13 minutes
Score: Richard - Agile European Winner; The rest of us (Charles, Chip, Keith, Kenny & Me) - Dumb-witted American Losers
Ratings: Richard 9, Charles* 7.5, Chip* 6, Keith* 3, Kenny* 7.5, Me* 7.5

I had heard a lot of people praise Jungle Speed before, and I definitely see what they like about it.  Of course, it's not for everyone (particularly Keith in this case), but it's something that I plan to play with some regularity and that I'll probably try to introduce to family and other non-gamers.

I don't know if it was the cold weather or possibly other conflicts now that we're into December, but our numbers were definitely down this week.  I still had a really great time both with the games and in meeting Richard.  I certainly wish him well in his continued travels, and hope that he'll make it back our way again sometime! 


Other Games Played

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Time: 26 minutes
Score: Chris 60, Sceadeau 57, Chris A 52, Shawn 40
Ratings: Chris 10, Sceadeau ??, Chris A 9, Shawn 9

Gosu
Time: 36 minutes
Score: Chris* 3, Shawn* 2
Ratings: Chris 7, Shawn 8

Memoir '44
Time: 45 minutes
Score: Richard* 4, Kenny 3
Ratings: Richard 7, Kenny 8

Mines of Zavandor
Time: 87 minutes
Score: John the Z-Man Guy 49, Chris* 38, Ken* 31
Ratings: Chris 7, Ken 7

Perry Rhodan
Time: 57 minutes
Score: Chris* 72, Chip* 69
Ratings: Chris 6, Chip 6

* First play for that Person


The horrors of war