With getting through my reports from Big Ole' Game Day and my usual lack of time to write, I've developed quite a little backlog of gaming to report on.  So here's the report from last week's game night (May 3)...   

Forbidden Island [BGG]

Supposedly, I'm working on finally getting a review of Forbidden Island written, so when Michelle and David showed up at game night (for the first time in forever), I suggested that we give it a whirl.  I also introduced them to the alternate island setups from the German edition, and we chose the "Arch of Fate" layout:
 

Here's the Arch of Fate.  Note that I've also printed out some "Deep Sea" tiles (filling in the lower spaces in the center) to indicate places that the Diver can't swim through, which would be hard to identify once island tiles started to disappear...
David was the Pilot, Michelle was the Engineer, and I was the Diver, and we played on the Elite difficulty level.  Things started out pretty okay with us, and we actually had a decent draw from the deck, but between the level we chose and the limitations of the island configuration, we still had a very hard time with it.

At one point, Michelle had a flood phase where an already-flooded Fool's Landing tile was one of five cards in the discard pile when four cards needed to be drawn.  We all held our breath for a moment until she was finished flipping over all four cards except Fool's Landing, though, so we had a momentary reprieve.  At the end of the game, however, we were in the position where we had to reshuffle all 10 or so remaining cards and pull just one, and guess which one I pulled... That's right, Fool's freaking Landing.  So we died. 

Time: 18 minutes
Score: Arch of Fate - Win; Explorers (David, Michelle & Norton**) - Done Drownded
Ratings: David 9, Michelle 8, Norton 8

I continue to like the alternate island setups, and Forbidden Island is hard to beat when it only takes 18 minutes start to finish.  Unfortunately, it was raining really hard when I was going home, and in getting the games out of the van, Forbidden Island slid off the top of the stack and popped open when it hit the ground, spilling all the tiles and cards into the very wet tire track in my garage.  The tiles dried out fine, but I'll probably have to sleeve the cards now since they're so warped and wrinkled.

Alien Frontiers [BGG]

After months and months of waiting, I finally got my copy of Alien Frontiers from Clever Mojo games.  Chip, Keith, and Shawn were all very interested in it, so they joined me try it out and break in my copy.

Everyone picked up on the basics pretty quickly, but Chip got a little extra lucky early on in being able to roll doubles and construct a few more "ships" (extra dice, that is).  I got a few irons in the fire here and there, and then also managed to get on the ship-construction path, eventually building up to six ships and getting the 7th ship from the Burroughs Desert. 


Chip had a pretty significant lead in points, though, and was almost out of colonies, so I made my move to pull off all sorts of shenanigans and get myself into the lead.  Meanwhile, Keith had picked up both victory point Alien Tech cards and was in contention for the win despite only having 3 colonies on the planet.  Chip could have ended the game on his penultimate turn, but he wasn't able to get into the lead himself and would have basically chosen who between Keith and I would win.  So he took his chances and kept the game going.  On my turn, all I had to do was roll a 5 or a 6, and I would have been able to use Terraforming and finished my last few spots on the Colonist Hub to end the game and win it, but I didn't roll anything higher than a 3.  Then on Chip's next turn, he was able to manipulate things enough to get the lead, play his last colony, and take the victory.     

Time: 83 minutes
Score: Chip* 8, Keith* 7+, Norton 7-, Shawn* 6
Ratings: Chip 8, Keith 7.5, Norton 8, Shawn 7

This play of Alien Frontiers was a lot of fun.  I really like how many, well, "shenanigans" as I called them, you can pull off through the careful placement of your dice, the powers granted by control of the territories, and the use of your Alien Tech cards.  But all of these options can also be a little bit of a downfall for the game, because they can also breed varying levels of analysis paralysis and lead to some significant downtime.  None of us were really playing slowly, but Shawn noted at one point that he had to wait 10 or so minutes between his turns.


And while I like that the game is close, I again wonder if maybe it's a little bit too close.  Both games that I've played have come down to a series of turns where every player had to do something to foil the plans of the last player, and winning ultimately came down to who had the right die roll at the right time to get into the lead and end the game.  The point swingyness created by gaining and losing control of territories (especially since you only have to tie someone to cancel their control of it) makes for a wild a crazy last few rounds that has left a touch of a sour taste in my mouth when compared to the rest of the game.     

But let me be clear, though, that neither of these issues make me dislike Alien Frontiers.  And I also don't want to make it seem like Chip didn't deserve to win or anything.  If anything, he was certainly in the best position going into the endgame, and it was most fitting for him to come out it with the win.  The game is a lot of fun to play, is a very appropriate length, and has a lot of potential for developing different strategies and clever little tactical plays, all of which make me want to play it a lot.

Traders of Carthage [BGG]

Another game that I want to play a lot more is Traders of Carthage, which just made the #6 spot on my list of favorite card games.  Despite being new to the game, Keith jumped right in and hung with Chip and me just fine.  Well, with me anyway, because Chip had two incredible deliveries while Keith and I had two incredibly unfortunate losses to pirates, giving Chip the comfortable win. 

Time: 50 minutes
Score: Chip 27, Norton 20, Keith* 19
Ratings: Chip 8, Norton 8, Keith 8

Traders of Carthage is such an elegant and clever little game.  There's so much tactical depth despite your limited choices each turn, and there's still some room for real strategic-level decisions as well.  It also strikes a very nice balance between wanting to focus on goods that no one else is collecting (therefore maximizing your score from that good) and forming emergent "alliances" with other players to make sure that the colors you both collect actually get delivered to Carthage.  It's cool, and I need to play it more.

Other Games Played

Blue Moon City
Time: 33 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 5, Chris 4, Stacey* 3
Ratings: Sceadeau 6, Chris 8.5, Stacey ?

Factory Fun
Time: 35 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 70, Alex 50, Ken 48
Ratings: Ken 8

La Strada
Time: 19 minutes
Score: Chris* 25, Shawn* 24, Chip* 20, Stacey* 17
Ratings: Chris 7.5, Shawn 8, Chip 7.5, Stacey ?


London
Time: 62 and 70 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau 63, Shawn* 50, Chris* 13, Stacey -3
Game 2: Sceadeau 65, Ken 55, Chris 53, Alex 4
Ratings: Sceadeau 8.5, Ken 9, Shawn 7.5, Chris 8.5, Alex ?, Stacey 8

Nightfall
Time: 90 minutes
Score: David 8, Sean* 8, Brad* 9, Jessica 12
Ratings: Sean 9, Brad 9, Jessica 9

Trollhalla
Time: 60 and 68 minutes
Game 1: Daniel* 78, Sean 67, David* 47, Jessica* 45
Game 2: Chip* 109, Shawn 66, Brad 59
Ratings: Daniel 6, Sean 8, David 8, Jessica 7, Chip 8.5, Shawn 9, Brad 9

* First play for that Person