Wow... Another week has flown by and I have no clue exactly where the time has gone.  Well, that's not really true.  Between being very busy at work, the craziness of having two small children (especially with 4 MD visits over the last week or so), and being abso-freaking-lutely worn out from all that's entailed with both, I haven't had much opportunity to update stuff around here.  Heck, when I'm only getting 2-6 hours of sleep per night without working on this blog, there's not a lot of extra wiggle room for fitting more into my week.

But anyway, I hope that I can get this report finished and posted before game night rolls around again tonight, so let's get started! 

Cloud 9 [BGG]

It's bad enough not getting to game night until 8pm or so, but at least I was able to jump right into a game this week.  Cloud 9 was all set up and ready, and I jumped right into it.  But as it turned out, that was the last jump that I made in the whole game.  Sort of due to holding a wild card that I really wanted to use and then in a vain attempt to catch up in big chunks, I consistently pushed my luck way too far with each balloon trip, and for the first time that I can ever remember, actually scored no points all game long. 

Kenny was a lot more prudent with his life (and scoring opportunities), though, and managed to run away to a commanding win.


Time: 20 minutes
Score: Ken 52, Tom 25, Shawn* 24, Chip 9, Matt* 6, Norton** 0
Ratings: Ken 7, Tom 7.5, Shawn 7.5, Chip 7.5, Matt 7.5, Norton 7.5

Cloud 9 is one of my favorite push-your-luck fillers, and you can check out my review for more information about it!

The Pillars of the Earth [BGG]

As I mentioned on our guild a while ago, The Pillars of the Earth is our least-played Game of the Month! ever.  Even in its highlight month (December 2007, if you're interested), it only saw 3 plays because one week of game night was canceled due to actually being on Christmas day.  And since then, it's been like pulling teeth to get it back to the table, despite looking great and being generally a lot of fun.

But anyway, I finally managed to break it out again this week with Ian, Tom and Chip.  Only Chip had played before, but even he needed a refresher on the rules since it'd been so long.  Unfortunately, as often happens with games I have trouble getting to the table, it has actually been a month or two since I reread the rules, so I sort of fumbled through them a lot more than I would have liked.


Chip, Tom, and Ian play Pillars with me, while you can see another table of Top Race in the background and some M:tG players to the back right.

We eventually got to playing, though, and I think we had a pretty good time with it.  I managed to pick up the alternate Woodworker that gives you money on turn 1, and sort of planned on going the big money route towards the end of the game.  As it turned out, though, I spent a lot of money on Master Builder placements later on, and didn't get the one available Money Changer that showed up.  I was therefore a little scattered all game long, and couldn't decide between focusing wood and stone for the most part.  

Ian went hard after metal all game long and stayed focused on getting direct VP's every chance he could.  In the end, I made it close with a lot of scoring in the last couple of turns, but he still managed to keep ahead of me and everyone else for the win.   

Time: 98 minutes
Score: Ian* 46, Norton 44, Tom* 39, Chip 38
Ratings: Ian 7.5, Norton 8, Tom 8, Chip 7

I've had a long and twisting journey with The Pillars of the Earth, starting with a rather poor impression of it and then later coming to appreciate more and more of what it has to offer.  And in coming back to it after a rather lengthy absence, I'd have to say that it still mostly meets my expectations.  I've played a lot of new games since I first encountered it, and it may be feeling its age just a little for me as a result, but I still like it quite a bit.


Even as we were setting up and playing last week, though, people were making comparisons to Stone Age.  But to me, I like Pillars a lot more than either it or Egizia.  Both of those games have some interesting twists on the worker-placement thing, but both seem flawed to me in that the card-collecting mechanics of both overshadow and ultimately tarnish the rest of the game.  But in Pillars of the Earth, it's all about using your workers and actions to collect the right resources, getting the right craftsmen, and converting resources into victory points.  It may be a little dry, but it's also focused and intuitive, and it allows for some rather well-defined "multiple paths to victory" which I love so much.

We also played with the expansion board and extra craftsmen, events, and priviledges, all of which do a lot to keep the game a little more fresh and account a little more for its luck-based elements.  I'm a little afraid to actually play the game with 5 or 6 players (which is allowed by the expansion), though, because I think that it would add a lot more time to what is already a game that runs a little long at times.      

Ca$h 'n Gun$ [BGG]

Pretending to shoot each other with orange foam guns can be fun.  But Ca$h 'n Gun$ has always left me a little flat; feeling like I should be having more fun than I actually do.  At least I got to play the character that most resembles me, though... 

Time: 17 minutes
Score: Tom $100k, Ian $90k, Norton $80k, Sceadeau $75k
Ratings: Tom 7.5, Ian 9, Norton 6, Sceadeau 7

I would like to try the Yakuza expansion sometime, though, just to see how the team game mixes it up.  But I'm also not willing to spend the money on it...

Puerto Rico [BGG]

Finally, I got around to playing the Game of the Month!  I actually played back-to-back games of Puerto Rico with Sceadeau, Ian, and Tom, both of which Sceadeau won by 8 points.  In the first game, I think that I actually played very well, focusing on Coffee to make a lot of money and buying up buildings when I could.  Sceadeau grabbed up a ton of Corn, though, and went all-out on shipping, so he had a big stack of VP chips by the end.  As it turned out, though, I was pretty darn close, and I think that literally one more turn would have allowed me to buy another Prestige building and maybe been able to pull out the win.  But Sceadeau was completely responsible for controlling the pace of the game and for making several direct attacks against me in various ways throughout the game (mostly in making me ship or rot my coffee, or otherwise preventing me from doing what I needed to do), so he totally earned his victory. 

In the second game, I was so tired that my eyes were blurring at times, and while I didn't really play poorly, I also didn't do anything particularly spectacular either.  I felt really frustrated most of the time, like every choice that I was making would help other people more than it would help me.  Ian, meanwhile, used the Hacienda and Construction Hut to fill up his plantation area with a lot of Quarries and other stuff, made enough money from one way or another (and used the quarries) to buy up two large buildings and challenge Sceadeau's dominance as well.

Time: 48 and 57 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau 49, Norton 41, Ian 36, Tom 32
Game 2: Sceadeau 50, Ian 42, Norton 33, Tom 32
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Norton 9, Ian 9, Tom 8


It's really hard to fault Puerto Rico for much of anything.  If my opinion continues to develop like it is now, I have a feeling that it's headed for the big "perfect 10" rating before the month is out!

Other Games Played

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Time: 30 minutes
Score: Kenny 77, Shawn 66, Matt 46
Ratings: Kenny ?, Shawn 10, Matt ?

Ca$h 'n Gun$
Time: 15 and 15 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau $120k, Joe* $80k, Ian* 75k, Tibins* $50k
Game 2: Joe $90k,Tibins $90k, Ian $70k, Sceadeau $55k,  Shawn* 45k, Matt* - Dead
Ratings: Sceadeau 8, Ian 9, Shawn 7, Matt 7

Chronicle
Time: 32, 26 and 25 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau 6, Chris 5, Ian* 1, Tibins* 0
Game 2: Chip 3, Matt* 1, Ian 1, Shawn 0
Game 3: Tom 5, Chip 3, Shawn 0, Matt 0, Ian 0
Ratings: Chris 7.5, Chip 7, Tom 7, Ian 7, Shawn 8, Matt 8

Popular Front
Time: 102 minutes
Score: Chip - Win, Kenny - Lose
Ratings: Chip 7.5, Kenny 8

Puerto Rico
Time: 58 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 86, Tibins* 54, Chris 53, Ian* 47
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Chris 8, Ian 10

Top Race
Time: 93 minutes
Score: Sceadeau $1 million, Ken $680k, Shawn $610k, Alex $430k, Chris $360k
Ratings: Sceadeau 6, Ken 7.5, Shawn 7.5, Alex 6, Chris 7

Game
Time: ?? minutes
Score: Scores
Ratings: Ratings

* First play for that Person
** Remember that I'm now known as "Norton"