One of our largest gatherings of recent memory brought a couple new, if familiar, faces to Border Board Games on Saturday night. We were pleased to have Lia travel from Burlington and Tim from up the road to join us for gaming mayhem.
The games started earlier in the day with twin tables of Battlestar Galactica. In both cases the cylons failed to destroy Galactica as the humans limped back to earth. There was no food, half the people had died en route to cylon attacks and fuel was running lower than the gas tank on a teenagers truck but for whatever reason people seemed happy. The fleet felt more spacious than it had before and a can of jellied meat seemed to last longer these days....
After a delicious meal of pub fare (it being St. Patrick's Day weekend it just felt right), we headed down to the Derby Line Village Hall for gaming. We had Beth running a table of Spin Monkeys, a new-to-our-collection product from Rio Grande Games that places monkeys in bumper cars running over fruit. It never having hit the table before it was a completely new experience for Rob, the Mikes, Lia, Andrew and Beth. It's a rather light game, as one might expect from the theme, but accommodated a lot of people and much hilarity ensued.
At the next table, and by special request, Dennis, Homer, Sue, Tim and I tackled Tammany Hall. As was the case in our previous experience, Dennis and Homer quickly struck a devil's bargain. Slippery Dennis was elected the first Mayor of New York only to face slander from every direction over the corruption of the worst police chief the city has ever seen (Homer). Tricky Dick served the next two terms as mayor despite a steadily eroding voter base, swinging a deal with Slandering Sue.
Once again, however, clean campaigning and skillful manipulation of immigrant populations helped the winner, Honest Tim, surge ahead at the polls and in the hearts of the Irish and Italians alike. Clearly the protestants were not his power base. despite having lingered in the back throughout much of the game both Tim and Sue rode waves of popularity to surge ahead of the embattled Tammany Hall veterans. Sue's surge fell just shy but did enable her to go from a distant fifth to second place behind Tim's impressive victory.
Afterwards Mike O, Rob and I tried Rob's game Sentinels of the Multiverse, a superhero themed co-op game. The game features a variety of different heroes each with their own respective power and equipment decks squaring off against a dastardly super villain and his minions. We may have inadvertently extended the length of the game at one point but our trio of masked avengers seemed largely incompetent in terms of dealing the villain a mortal blow. Next time Citizen whatsyourface...next time.
At the other table Andrew, St. Jay Mike, Beth and Dennis played Dominion. Apparently Mike and Dennis were slightly soured on he game based on their original introduction to the game. Having gone through the game with people willing to teach them instead of just beat them appears to have made new converts to the former Game of the Year.
Who knows what merrymaking will accompany the Border Board Games in April but I for one wouldn't mind tossing out a Uwe Rosenberg title onto the table.
Showing posts with label Battlestar Galactica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battlestar Galactica. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Night of Ghosts and Gallactica
Jan 15th's Border Board Games was a quiet one with Bethany, Richard, Rob, Angela, and Carlo attending. Carlo arrived just as the game, Ghost Stories, was getting started. Richard and Bethany had played Ghost Stories before and had wanted to try again. Rob and Angela brought their copy and provided the opportunity to try this difficult game.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative 4-player game where you each control a monk (or what I call a ninja since each player token looks like a ninja) where you try to keep a village from becoming haunted and making all the inhabitants run away in fear. There are nine tiles you can move your ninja to and each tile allows your ninja to do a special action. Each ninja also has his own special power than can be used on his own turn.
When it is your turn, you draw a ghost card and place it on the board. Some ghosts are difficult to defeat, some not so difficult, and some add 'haunters' to the board. If a haunter reaches the board's edge, a tile is turned over and becomes inactive. If there tiles are turned over, the village has become haunted and the players lose. I'm not sure of other losing conditions.
On your turn, you can move one space and then take an action, either using the tile's action or fighting a ghost. Since a lot of ghosts come out, it seems ninjas spend most of the time fighting ghosts and not using the tiles' powers.
We were able to fend of ghosts pretty well but in the end, three tiles had been turned over and we ended up losing the game before even seeing the big bad ghost to even try to defeat him.
After Ghost Stories, we broke out Battlestar Gallactica complete with all the expansions. Everyone except Angela had played before. Bethany accused Rob of being a cylon even before loyalty cards were dealt. Bethany played Tory as president, Richard played Felix, Rob played Helo as Admiral, Angela played Apollo, and Carlo was Galen. It was tough determining who the trader or traders were although, as the game got near the end, it was suspected that Rob was a cylon. Carlo suggested that Rob/Helo be put in the airlock and Bethany/Tory felt that was an excellent idea. The skill check didn't pass and Rob/Helo remained alive. It was curious that there were about half the cards in favor of airlocking Rob and about half that weren't which made me (Bethany) suspect there was another trader but not sure who.
Rob/Helo then revealed himself as a cylon (see! Bethany was right!)and he tried to work his evil powers to bring the Gallactica down. And then shortly after, at Rob's urging, Angela revealed herself as a cylon too! But it was too late and Gallactica managed to jump to Kobol.
This game of Gallactica seemed a bit unusual in that Gallactica's resources didn't drain as quickly as they normally seem to, therefore, the game was in favor of the humans. We didn't play for 11 hours although I'm sure Carlo would have been happy if we did.
Ghost Stories is a cooperative 4-player game where you each control a monk (or what I call a ninja since each player token looks like a ninja) where you try to keep a village from becoming haunted and making all the inhabitants run away in fear. There are nine tiles you can move your ninja to and each tile allows your ninja to do a special action. Each ninja also has his own special power than can be used on his own turn.
When it is your turn, you draw a ghost card and place it on the board. Some ghosts are difficult to defeat, some not so difficult, and some add 'haunters' to the board. If a haunter reaches the board's edge, a tile is turned over and becomes inactive. If there tiles are turned over, the village has become haunted and the players lose. I'm not sure of other losing conditions.
On your turn, you can move one space and then take an action, either using the tile's action or fighting a ghost. Since a lot of ghosts come out, it seems ninjas spend most of the time fighting ghosts and not using the tiles' powers.
We were able to fend of ghosts pretty well but in the end, three tiles had been turned over and we ended up losing the game before even seeing the big bad ghost to even try to defeat him.
After Ghost Stories, we broke out Battlestar Gallactica complete with all the expansions. Everyone except Angela had played before. Bethany accused Rob of being a cylon even before loyalty cards were dealt. Bethany played Tory as president, Richard played Felix, Rob played Helo as Admiral, Angela played Apollo, and Carlo was Galen. It was tough determining who the trader or traders were although, as the game got near the end, it was suspected that Rob was a cylon. Carlo suggested that Rob/Helo be put in the airlock and Bethany/Tory felt that was an excellent idea. The skill check didn't pass and Rob/Helo remained alive. It was curious that there were about half the cards in favor of airlocking Rob and about half that weren't which made me (Bethany) suspect there was another trader but not sure who.
Rob/Helo then revealed himself as a cylon (see! Bethany was right!)and he tried to work his evil powers to bring the Gallactica down. And then shortly after, at Rob's urging, Angela revealed herself as a cylon too! But it was too late and Gallactica managed to jump to Kobol.
This game of Gallactica seemed a bit unusual in that Gallactica's resources didn't drain as quickly as they normally seem to, therefore, the game was in favor of the humans. We didn't play for 11 hours although I'm sure Carlo would have been happy if we did.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Something to be thankful for
Saturday, November 20 marked the latest Border Board games game day at the Derby line Village hall. Featuring a theme based around colonization and exploration as well as hauntings, demons and other unassociated things, was held to mark the upcoming holiday.
We had two new faces to the Border Board Games community though neither was especially new per se. Welcome to J-Roc and Carlo and thanks to the Burlington crew for swinging by. Alex, Rachel and Tyler made the trip from parts west to join in the fun and mayhem. My apologies for the lack of squeak in the cheese curd but the large poutine lived up to the hype (I hope!).
We had games, games and more games as the crowd swelled to 16 (plus the wee ones as well) allowing us to run many games simultaneously. The night started off with a game of Age of Empires III. Original Josh's unusual strategy allowed him to sneak off for the win by a significant margin. He never earned much money, had lots of mismatched trade goods, owned few capital buildings but consistently scored well in the colonization rounds. The battle for Canada was fierce as Ken flooded the northlands with tons of British settlers in an attempt to crowd out Shannon's Spanish presence.
Next up we tackled a game of Stone Age. This time Homer came over and worked up a big point tool strategy. He never had much in the way of huts and earned only a few points here and there during the regular rounds but his eight-times tool multiplier catapulted him from the back and into second place. Only my plantings and technologies (7 of 8) allowed me to sneak ahead by a handful of points.
Elsewhere Rob, Ken and Josh ventured into the depths of Castle Ravenloft followed by a game of Cyclades. The Burlington crew and Carlo played Incan Gold before moving on to Battlestar Galactica when Beth came in with Shannon. The game featured a partial introduction of the rules from the Pegasus expansion. Carlo chose to be the Cylon commander John Cavil to add some spice. Rachel (Starbuck) turned out to be the Cylon saboteur. As it turned out the brave crew was unable to defeat the insidious Cylon threat before disaster claimed the fleet.
Later on the group broke out Betrayal at House on the Hill joined this time by Angela. The traitor turned out to be a pre-pubescent boy played by Carlo. Luckily the heroes ended up destroying their voodoo dolls in time to thwart the evil but not before two of them had perished in that grim domicile. At another table Homer, Kim, Zeke and Alexis burned and salted their way through a game of A La Carte as well as played through a game of Puerto Rico earlier in the evening.
A late start coupled with my failing memory of a single play five months earlier derailed an ill-advised foray into Dungeon Lords. We played long enough to get a feel for the game but not long enough to withstand an onslaught of heroic invaders.
We had two new faces to the Border Board Games community though neither was especially new per se. Welcome to J-Roc and Carlo and thanks to the Burlington crew for swinging by. Alex, Rachel and Tyler made the trip from parts west to join in the fun and mayhem. My apologies for the lack of squeak in the cheese curd but the large poutine lived up to the hype (I hope!).
We had games, games and more games as the crowd swelled to 16 (plus the wee ones as well) allowing us to run many games simultaneously. The night started off with a game of Age of Empires III. Original Josh's unusual strategy allowed him to sneak off for the win by a significant margin. He never earned much money, had lots of mismatched trade goods, owned few capital buildings but consistently scored well in the colonization rounds. The battle for Canada was fierce as Ken flooded the northlands with tons of British settlers in an attempt to crowd out Shannon's Spanish presence.
Next up we tackled a game of Stone Age. This time Homer came over and worked up a big point tool strategy. He never had much in the way of huts and earned only a few points here and there during the regular rounds but his eight-times tool multiplier catapulted him from the back and into second place. Only my plantings and technologies (7 of 8) allowed me to sneak ahead by a handful of points.
Elsewhere Rob, Ken and Josh ventured into the depths of Castle Ravenloft followed by a game of Cyclades. The Burlington crew and Carlo played Incan Gold before moving on to Battlestar Galactica when Beth came in with Shannon. The game featured a partial introduction of the rules from the Pegasus expansion. Carlo chose to be the Cylon commander John Cavil to add some spice. Rachel (Starbuck) turned out to be the Cylon saboteur. As it turned out the brave crew was unable to defeat the insidious Cylon threat before disaster claimed the fleet.
Later on the group broke out Betrayal at House on the Hill joined this time by Angela. The traitor turned out to be a pre-pubescent boy played by Carlo. Luckily the heroes ended up destroying their voodoo dolls in time to thwart the evil but not before two of them had perished in that grim domicile. At another table Homer, Kim, Zeke and Alexis burned and salted their way through a game of A La Carte as well as played through a game of Puerto Rico earlier in the evening.
A late start coupled with my failing memory of a single play five months earlier derailed an ill-advised foray into Dungeon Lords. We played long enough to get a feel for the game but not long enough to withstand an onslaught of heroic invaders.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)