I really dislike getting to game night so late every week.  Mostly, it's because I always seem to walk in just after everyone is already involved in games, so I stand around for 30 minutes or an hour watching people have fun or browsing around looking at games I can't buy right now.  But anyway, that's enough of my whining, because I did eventually get to play a few games...

Alien Frontiers [BGG]

First off, before I forget to mention it later, Alien Frontiers is going to be our Game of the Month! for June!  Since I own one of the only 2 copies in the group, I will hopefully have a much greater chance of actually playing it each week, especially considering that I still have not played the May GotM! (London) since it always seems to get played (once again, I get a little whiny) before I arrive each week.


Tim, Steve, and Chris plot against me!

Chris asked to play Alien Frontiers, and Steve and Tim (both new to the game) jumped in with us as well.  After explaining the rules (which I think I've got down pretty well now), things got ugly on the very first round.  Two or three of us used the  Raider's Outpost to steal away other people's starting resources, and then Steve made stealing stuff the focus of the rest of his game.  At least I managed to mind trick him into stealing Tim's Holographic Decoy one time instead of my resources, so I came out okay.

Despite being a little distracted (which I'll come to in a minute), I made using the Colony Constructor as often as I could my mission, got ahold of the Bradbury Plateau (making it only cost 2 ore instead of 3) and then went to town adding colonies to the planet.  I also used the Terraforming Station a time or two and dropped at least one with the Colonist Hub, and ended the game with 2 more colonies on the planet than any other player, winning pretty easily.      
 
I was green...
Time: 62 minutes
Score: Norton 9, Chris 4, Steve* 4, Tim* 4
Ratings: Norton 8, Chris 8.5, Steve 7, Tim 9

I'm continuing to have a lot of fun with Alien Frontiers, and it's seeming to move along better and better as we have more a clue what to do.  I have a little pang of concern about the power of the Colony Constuctor, though, so I'll be interested to see if it balances out with more play.  Thankfully, it'll get the time as Game of the Month! to figure that stuff out.

Oh, and that 62-minute play time was actually a little inflated, considering that I spent some time teaching Troyes to another table.  As we were playing, I looked over and saw that four guys had pulled out my copy of the game and were going to play, and when I went over to see how they were doing, I realized that they were all attempting to learn it from the rules as they played.  I couldn't let them suffer that way, though, so I did my best to teach it between my turns (and unfortunately didn't notice at least once that my game was waiting on me), but I at least gave them a nice head start with the game.  I wish that I could have watched them play a little, though, because they still misunderstood a few things that we realized later.  Thankfully, they still had a good time with it, though.

Dice Town [BGG]

I've been trying to decide if I wanted to keep or trade away Dice Town, so I brought it along this week.  It's actually only the second time I've played it, and while I had some fun with it, I don't really see it getting a lot more play from me, so I think that I'll try more aggressively to get rid of it.  

We were in a pretty good mood about the game though, so I think that we all had fun as we played.  But I don't really know that the mechanics of the game had a lot to do with our fun.  Instead, it had a lot more to do with joking about how much Sceadeau liked 'the girls" and other such nonsense.

Speaking of Sceadeau and "the girls" (you know, who occupied the upper rooms of the salloon and saw whichever man could offer them the most payment each turn), that turned out to be another detractor for the game in the end.  He basically just went for them every single turn for most of the game, and through stealing cards from everyone else, ended up beating the crap out of us.  Not that it's all that strange for him to beat us like rented mules or anything, but I still fear for the balance of the game...


Look! Kenny's already starting to bow down to Sceadeau!  
Time: 46 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 46, Kenny* 19, Keith* 18, Chip* 15, Norton 15
Ratings: Sceadeau 7, Kenny 6.5, Keith 6, Chip 7, Norton 6.5

Oh, one other thing, we made an incorrect ruling at one point in the game.  When no dice of a particular denomination are rolled, it is not considered a "tie" that the Sheriff can break (usually in his favor, of course).  For such a simple and light game, the rulebook is tragically poor both in its detail and its overall translation.

Dice Town isn't really bad, though, it's just not anything spectacular for me.  But if you think it might be right for you, drop me an email or geekmail and make me an offer for something on my "want-in-trade" list.

Puerto Rico [BGG]

It was late, but I wasn't going to even think about leaving after playing only two games (especially when one of them was Dice Town).  Sceadeau and Ian are pretty much always up for a game of Puerto Rico, though, so we whooped it out and took it for a spin.

I started with the Corn plantation and decided to go hard for shipping, which seemed to be coming together nicely in the early game.  Ian went for lots of Quarries and a building strategy (even if he had to fight his instincts to do it a be reminded by Sceadeau to stay on target), which Sceadeau just did "his thing" that he always does of putting together bits and pieces that score him lots of points and win him every game. 

I was totally screwed, however, when I got blocked out of a couple of Captain phases before I got my Wharf up and running.  It didn't help when I actually initiated one of them, forgetting that I hadn't actually populated the aforementioned Wharf yet, and just gave points to Ian and Sceadeau (and spoiled some corn in the process).  The end result was that when Sceadeau ended the game, I had the totally miserable score of just 25 points.  But, if the game had just lasted one more round, I would have finally been able to move that massive wad of indigo sitting in my small warehouse and at least look more respectable!    


If I'd just been able to actually run this engine a few times, I might have scored some decent points!
Time: 38 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 43, Ian 41, Norton 25
Score (if the game had lasted one more round): Sceadeau 50, Ian 46, Norton 41
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Ian 10, Norton 10

What else can I say... Go read my review if you want to know what I think about Puerto Rico!

Other Games Played

Caylus
Time: 70 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 100, Shawn* 53, Ian 53
Ratings: Sceadau 8. Shawn 7, Ian 8

London
Time: 95 minutes
Score: Steve 68, Ken 64, Chris 34, Tim* 19
Ratings: Steve 8, Ken 8, Chris 8, Tim ?

Pergamon
Time: 45 minutes
Score: Stacy* 20, Sean* 9, Brad* 7, Shawn* 7
Ratings: Stacy 7, Sean 7, Brad 6, Shawn 7

Ra
Time: 113 minutes (huh? that can't be right...)
Score: Shawn 40, Sean* 35, Stacy* 26, Brad 18
Ratings: Shawn 10, Sean 7, Stacy 7, Brad 9

Top Race
Time: ??
Score: Sceadeau $1.04mil, Chip $720k, Ken $700k, Jen* $620k, Keith* $410k, Matt* $290k
Ratings: Sceadeau 7, Chip 7.5, Ken 7, Jen* 7, Keith* 7, Matt* 7

Yggdrasil
Time: 83 minutes
Score: Evil - Win, Asgardian gods (Chris, Chip*, Jen*, Ken, Steve & Tim*) - Lose
Ratings: Chris 6, Chip 7, Jen ?, Ken 7.5, Steve 8, Tim ?

* First play for that Person