Despite getting to game night a little after 8:00 this week, I was able to jump right into a game of...

Alien Frontiers [BGG]

I didn't have any luck rolling the requisite doubles needed to build more ships early on, so I managed to pick up both the Booster Pod (to add a pip to one die) and the Gravity Manipulator (which lets you shift a pip from one die to another) to give me better control of my dice.  My first extra die actually came from using the Colony Constructor to drop a colony in the Burroughs Desert and then discard my Orbital Teleporter (which was my initial tech card) to move Sceadeau's colony elsewhere, thus letting me buy the Relic Ship.


But despite my best efforts at dicey shenanigans, Sceadeau managed to build up to 6 (and later on, 7) ships very quickly and took control of the game.  We attacked him pretty heavily, but with the use of the Mind Control Helmet, he was able to make frequent use of the Colony Constructor and play out all 6 colonies while the rest of us only had 3 or 4 on the planet. 

Time: 47 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 7, Keith 6, Chris 4, Norton 4
Ratings: Sceadeau 6, Keith 7, Chris 8.5, Norton 8

When it's under an hour, Alien Frontiers is a lot of fun.  But it nags me more and more that the person who gets luckiest to roll doubles in the early game will get the significant advantage of more dice to roll, which then tends to translate into winning the game.  I wonder if having everyone start with 4 active ships/dice would help that a little bit...
 
Queen's Ransom [BGG]

Jon the Z-Man Guy then taught a few of us Queen's Ransom.  It's a quick little deduction game about figuring out who kidnapped the Queen and where she's been hidden, and I actually won!  But the reality is that I won mostly because I happened to be dealt two cards that let me fill my hand up with money cards, and therefore could just look at clues for the rest of the game rather than worrying about getting more money.  In the end, my last bit of information was given to me when someone else made an incorrect guess and eliminated the only thing that I didn't know yet. 

Time: 11 minutes
Score: Norton* - Win; Chris*, Keith* & Sceadeau* - Lose
Ratings: Norton 6, Chris 6

It didn't do a lot for me, but still, at 11 minutes and a $10 or so price tag, it would still be a nice investment for someone who really liked deduction games.

Animal Upon Animal: Balancing Bridge [BGG]

At this point, I was finally able to get people to play one of my new games (this one from Father's Day) with me!  In fact, we actually played Animal Upon Animal: Balancing Bridge 3 times in a row!  Jon the Z-Man Guy won all three, but we had a total blast the whole time.  We even dealt out an extra card to everyone in the last game, just to make it last a bit longer.


Jon places a "dinosaur" (which is techincally an iguana, I think)
If you can believe it, we actually got into a  little rules question when we played.  The only real directions in the rules about stacking the animals say, "When stacking an animal, it must always touch at least one other animal, that animal can be the crocodile." So wondered if you could put animals beside of the crocodile or other animals (rather than on top of or at the end of animals already on the bridge).  It's probably technically okay, but seemed against the spirit of a stacking game, so we ruled against it.  

There was also some question about whether you could use your new animal to push around or stabilize other animals before you placed.  We sort of allowed some gentle nudges, but when Sceadeau tried to pick up a piece by getting under it and then carrying it somethere else, we again put our foot down. 


We tended to think outside the box for our placement of the animals
Time: 35 minutes (for 3 games)
Score: Jon the Z-Man Guy* - 3 wins; Chris*, Keith*, Sceadeau* & Norton* - 0 wins
Ratings: Jon the Z-Man Guy 7, Chris 8.5, Keith 7, Sceadeau ?, Norton 8

Balancing Bridge is at least as good as the original Tier auf Tier/Animal Upon Animal, and may actually be even better.  Game-geek rules-arguing aside, it's a really gorgeous family/filler game that I'm really glad to have in my collection.  And I also can't wait to play a game of uber-Tier-auf-Tier where we play with all of the animals and see how ridiculous it can get!

I also noticed this picture on the Haba webpage, and wonder what kind of glue they used to get the animals to stack up that high.  But even if they're there honestly, I can guaran-frickin-tee that the boy didn't put them there...
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (LCG) [BGG]

(This is a pretty involved session report, so if you're not familiar with the game, you could always skim the rules or refer to this awesome card reference to keep things straight.)

After getting straight a few lingering rules issues over the last week, Keith, Kenny and I decided to make another run at the "Journey Down the Anduin" quest.  Kenny used the Lore deck (which I did a really terrible job with last time), Keith took the Tactics deck (to kill lots of enemies), and I used the Spirit deck (which is good at questing and helping eliminate locations). 


Kenny, Ian (who was just watching), and Keith

We did the setup, revealing three encounter cards first and then fishing out the freaking Hill Giant as well.  But we were also very aware that we could use a mulligan if we didn't like our opening hand, and since I'm a little more familiar with the contents of the decks, Kenny used one to get a Forest Snare into his hand (which you can play on an enemy to prevent from ever attacking).  Keith drew a Feint in his initial hand (which we needed to keep the Giant from attacking on the first turn it was engaged), and I drew both a Northern Tracker and a Lorien Guide (which are useful allies to eliminate all the locations that build up in the staging area).   So I felt pretty good with how we were starting out.

Things went pretty much as planned with the Giant, which we left in the staging area for a few turns while we quested heavily, and then when Keith chose to engage with it, he played his Feint to keep it from attacking that turn until Kenny could play the Forest Snare to neutralize it until we could get it all killed.  We drew into some really bad threat values on a turn or two when we weren't focusing as much on questing, so we all took a little more threat damage than we wanted to. 

But Keith was looking good with Gimli all armored up with Citadel Plate, and he was expecting to get a few more damage on him (to further increase his attack power) by defending against an enemy.  That is, anyway, at least until Driven by Shadow was revealed as its shadow card, which caused him to discard the armor and therefore killed him.

Things looked pretty ugly for a while, there, but Keith's Horn of Gondor reaped him a good amount of resources, and I eventually drew into Fortune or Fate, which let me bring Gimli back from the dead.  Keith soom used all those extra resources to play out Beorn, who is just a monster when attacking. 


We finished up the first phase of the quest at some point along in here and took to the river, which meant that enemies couldn't engage us automatically based on our threat values.  But between Keith choosing to engage them, Dúnhere (one of my heroes) attacking enemies in the staging area, and my Northern Tracker putting progress tokens on locations, we kept the threat values pretty manageable. 

The Marsh Adder and another Hill Giant eventually showed up, but with the help of a heroic sacrifice from an ally and then another Feint (for the Giant), Keith was able to engage them on successive turns and kill them outright (even though Beorn had to use his big ability, which causes him to be shuffled back into the deck, to take out the Giant).  

We eventually managed to push through the 16 progress tokens we needed for the second quest card and enter into the third phase.  Basically, you then deal out 2 cards per player into the staging area, but then don't stage anything else for the rest of the game.  Then, all you have to do is eliminate all the enemies to win.  But of course, after engaging all the enemies out there, everyone had 3 or 4 enemies tied to them, which was pretty ugly.

Kenny had played out an Erebor Hammersmith to bring the Forst Snare back to his hand and (thankfully) neutralized Chieftan Ufthak (who can get out of control quick).  Otherwise, the next few turns saw lots of heroic sacrifice and mad attacking to take out enemies as fast as we could.  By the last turn, I had lost both Éowyn and Eleanor, and Kenny had sacrificed Denethor (which is a more noble end than he saw in the canon story, of course), but only one enemy remained.  And when a heavily wounded (but once again armored) Gimli leveled his axe at that murder of Eastern Crows, he blew them away and won the freaking game! 


Our "trophies" 
Time: 100 minutes
Score: Forces of Light (Keith, Kenny & Norton) - WIN (170 points); Journey Down the Anduin Quest - Lose
Ratings: Keith 9, Kenny 9, Norton 9

The Lord of the Rings LCG just keeps getting better and better for me.  I definitely saw an increase in our mastery over the system this week, and at the same time, with being less distracted by the mechanics of the game, the narrative of the quest also seemed to really shine through for the first time.  The game has all of the tension of a great cooperative game and all the variety of a great CCG.  I love that you face tough decisions every turn about where to put your resources, both in what cards you play and in which abilities and activities you commit your heroes and allies to. 

The pressure of the Quest action alone is incredible, because it often takes an all-out commitment of characters to make any real progress towards it, but just to keep from taking significant threat damage still ties us a moderate number of your characters.  And of course, every character you commit to questing will be unable to attack, defend, or use its special ability.  

And while I'm continuing to look forward to the solitaire and deck-building parts of the game, it's still the deep level of cooperation required by the game that has me most excited.  Efforts must be coordinated to be successful, and the opportunities for the decks to synergize is pretty incredible even for just the preconstructed ones.  

But I guess that's enough writing for now, so I'd better go...      

Other Games Played

Agricola
Time: 72 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 54, Chris 33, Ian S. 30, Ian 16
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Chris 9.5

Alien Frontiers
Time: 75 minutes
Score: Steve 9, Ken 8, Tim 8, Britt 7
Ratings: Steve 8, Ken 8, Tim 9, Britt 8

Chez Geek
Time: 30 minutes
Score: Steve 16, Britt* 13, Tim* 9, Ken 7
Ratings: Steve 7, Britt 7, Tim 7, Ken 6.5

Hotel Samoa
Time: 50 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 193, Brad* 178, Ian* 164, Keith* 143, Chris* 104
Ratings: Sceadeau 4, Brad 6, Ian 3, Keith 5, Chris 5

London
Time: 100 minutes
Score: Steve 71, Ken 46, Tim 44, Britt 25
Ratings: ??

Macao
Time: 87 and 90 minutes
Game 1: Matt 112, Ian 74, Stacy 57, Shawn 53
Game 2: Sceadeau 73, Matt 70, Ian 58, Stacy 35
Ratings: Matt 10, Sceadeau 9, Ian 10, Stacy 9, Shawn 8

Troyes
Time: 111 minutes
Score: Sean 42, Matt 38, Shawn 37, Stacy 36
Ratings: Sean 8, Matt 8.5, Shawn 9, Stacy 9

* First play for that Person