As usual, I got to game night woefully late (8:15 or so), but thankfully, Keith was actually not involved in a game, and he was interested in jumping right into a game of...

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game [BGG]

I've been temped to buy into a few of the earlier Living Card Games (LCG's), but held off for a number of reasons.  When I heard that a new one was coming out that was cooperative, supported solo play, and was themed around the Lord of the Rings, though, I decided to finally give the format a chance.  I had read over the rules a few times and played out most of one solo game, so I hope that I mostly got everything right as I taught and played the game.


There are four "spheres" of influence in the game, and Keith chose to play the Spirit preconstructed deck (with the heroes Éowyn, Eleanor, and Dúnhere) while I played the Leadership deck (with Aragorn, Glóin, and Théodred as my heroes).  The Spirit deck seems mostly to be about performing the Quest action and bringing things out of the discard pile, while Leadership is pretty balanced between Questing and Fighting.

We started a little slow, both in trying to make sure we follow the rules and to get the hang of how to play.  Early on, we were a little frustrated because we kept drawing locations instead of enemies, so my growing army of Gondorians had little to do.  I played Faramir (quite a powerful ally) on the second turn, and he helped Éowyn to power through several of the quest phases.  We also did some travelling and took care of a few locations to keep the threat value of the staging area pretty under control.

Keith played Galdalf to draw cards and then played Stand and Fight to bring him back and draw even more cards.  Unfortunately, he and I both had to discard 5 event cards when the Eyes of the Forest treachery card came up. It was especially bad since I was holding two copies of For Gondor! (which would have given all my heroes and allies +1 attack and defense for a turn) just as more enemies started to appear.

But I was able to hold off most of the enemies and eliminate a few of them in time for us to really get rolling in the Quest phases, and before long we were on the last of the Quest cards.  Aragorn and a few allies even managed to take out Chieftan Ufthak for an additional 4 victory points as we sped along and completed the quest for the win!

Time: 78 minutes
Score: Heroes of Light (Keith* and Norton*) - Win (83 points); The Shadow - Lose
Ratings: Keith 8, Norton (Me) 8

Miraculously, after reviewing the rules once again, I don't think we made any noticeable mistakes with the rules.  And while this session was certainly a little rough, I really liked how it played.  It's really pretty simple, and I think that most of my questions (like, can you respond to an effect by playing an event?) are due more to some assumptions and momories of CCG's I've played rather than any ambiguity in the rules (and I think the answer to my question is generall NO, unless the event says that you can).


I lost Glóin along the way, but Aragorn and Théodred survived.  And my threat counter was only up to 36, since we never lost a quest action.

With 2 or more players, I think that the preconstructed decks are able to be pretty effective.  But they're very one dimensional, and I think that you'd really have to build your own deck in order to play solitaire.  I'm very interested in trying out deckbuilding, though, so it shouldn't be a problem.  I'd also like to try playing with 3 or 4 people usng the precons as well, which I think I'll be able to do next week at game night.

I've already decided to buy at least the first few Adventure Packs, though, and I'm interested to see what they will add to the game!  

Airlines: Europe [BGG]

I've never had the chance to try out the original Airlines or Union Pacific, so I was glad to jump into a game of Airlines: Europe when Adam offered it. 

I ended up losing.  As in, last place.  And I didn't have much fun.  Check out why after the stats...


Time: 64 minutes
Score: Matt* 87, Sceadeau* 86, Keith* 76, Adam 76, Norton* 73
Ratings: Matt 7, Sceadeau 7, Keith 7, Adam 7, Me 6

Okay, first of all, the game looks pretty darn good.  The little airplanes are really cool, and all the other components were great quality and all.  But talking about how a game looks when you're supposed to be talking about your opinions of it is sort of like saying that a blind date has a "great personality". 

So anyway, I could appreciate what the game was trying to do, and even liked a lot of things about it (especially how the airlines' value would increase based on how much money you invested in expanding its routes).  And like a lot of good games, there was always more that I wanted to do on my turn than I could actually get done.  But unlike those good games, for which this kind of thing is tense and exciting, in Airlines: Europe I found it to be boringly frustrating.


Probably the biggest issue limiting my investment in Airlines: Europe was the randomness of the cards available to be drawn each turn.  Like in Ticket to Ride, 5 cards were always available to draw from (or you could always blindly draw from the top of the deck).  But unlike TtR, it was really hard to draw cards (since you only got to draw one of them, after building a route on the board).  So the randomness of which cards were available was magnified several times over by the relatively low turnover of the cards in the display and by how much investment you had to make to draw them.

As the game was being explained, someone mentioned how the stock cards were sort of like in Acquire.  Now, I love Acquire, but what makes the stock ownership cool in that game is that you get to choose exactly which ones you want to buy each turn.  Imagine how bad it would suck if you could only buy one of five randomly dealt stocks each turn, instead of up to 3 of whichever one you want! 

All that being said, though, I am totally open to the possibility that I just missed something really important in how to play the game.  Maybe there's some way to mitigate this randomness or otherwise have more fun with the game, and I'm even open to playing it again sometime soon as well.  But as for now, I'm left feeling that it's a game along the same weight and feel as Ticket to Ride, except slower, more boring, and more random.   

Alien Frontiers [BGG]

For my late-night gaming this week, I pulled out our new Game of the Month!, Alien Frontiers.  Kenny and Brad were new, but you wouldn't know it to look at the score.  Kenny got up to 6 ships (i.e. dice) pretty quickly, and then used the Colony Constructor over and over again to beat the crap out of us and win.

I had trouble rolling the doubles I needed to build more ships, so I invested in Alien Tech cards pretty often early on.  But even with them and once I got up to 5 and 6 dice, I just could not roll what I wanted to save my life!  I don't know how many turns I seemingly wasted because I didn't get the roll I needed or the spots were blocked or whatever, but I only ended up getting 2 colonies on the planet, and one of my VP's was actually from the Alien Tech card I was dealt at the start of the game.  so I truly only scored 3 freaking points all game long.  Wow, I sucked.



Time: 67 minutes
Score: Kenny* 10, Brad* 5, Keith 5, Me 4
Ratings: Kenny 8, Brad 7, Keith 7.5, Me 8

Alien Frontiers is still a lot of fun.  At just around an hour or so, it moves nicely and doesn't wear out its welcome.  As I mentioned last week, though, I'm definitely seeing more inequality between action spaces, and think that the Colony Constructor (especially when paired with the effect from either the Bradbury Plateau (which makes the cost for the CC lower) or the Heinlein Plains (which makes it easier to get the ore you need for the CC), things can get out of control.

And in complete opposition to my initial impressions (which were that the game was almost too balanced and agranular, where everyone always had the same score), with experienced players it seems like the first person to get a colony on the planet has a distinct advantage, both in the use of region powers and in driving the pace of the game.  But even in utter loss, I had a good time, which is always a good sign.


Keith, Brad, and Kenny beat the snot out of me...
Other Games Played

Agricola
Time: 77 minutes
Score: Chris 50, Sceadeau 50, Matt 41, Stacey 31
Ratings: Chris 9.5, Sceadeau 10, Matt 10, Stacey 10

Alien Frontiers
Time: 60 minutes
Score: Chip 8, Chris 6, Ian S* 5, Stacey 5
Ratings: Chip 8.5, Chris 8.5, Ian S 9, Stacey ?

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
Time: 41 minutes
Score: Sean 72, Shawn 65
Ratings: Sean 8, Shawn 10

Blood Bowl
Time: 150 minutes
Score: Britt 2, Ken 1
Ratings: Britt 9, Ken 8

China
Time: ?? minutes
Score: Chip 32, Chris 24, Brad 22, Ken* 20, Stacey* 16
Ratings: Chip 9, Chris 9, Brad 7, Ken 8, Stacey ?

Chronicle
Time: 32 minutes
Score: Brad* 2, Sean* 1, Adam 1, Shawn 0
Ratings: Brad 7, Sean 5, Adam 8.5, Shawn 8

Factory Fun
Time: 38 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 88, Stacey 67, Chris 63, Keith 58, Matt 48
Ratings: Sceadeau ?, Stacey 6, Chris 8, Keith 6, Matt 7

Macao
Time: 55 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 91, Matt 79, Adam 72 
Ratings: Sceadeau 9, Matt 10, Adam 10

Mission: Red Planet
Time: 60 minutes
Score: Ken 49, Brad 47, Stacey* 47, Chip 31
Ratings: Ken 7.5, Brad 7, Stacey 7, Chip 7.5

Trollhalla
Time: ??
Score: Sean 75, Shawn 61, Brad 54, Adam* 32
Ratings: Sean 9, Shawn 9, Brad 9, Adam 7


Look!  Playing games is fun!
* First play for that Person