Random Babblings

So among my many hobbies is Reading and playing board games. I play games at least once a month out our monthly game day, But I’m always reading. I don’t know that I’m ever not reading one book or another. I’ve gone ahead an put of some widgets here to show what I’ve played recently, and what I’m currently reading. The times I play games varied and will sometimes play multiple games in one day, so those updates will probably be random. I usually am only reading one book at a time, so those should be steady. I might leave one past book and the current book, we’ll see how it turns out.

So read some books and play some games.

Though I expect a lot of titles to be like this. I just don’t seem to be good at keeping this up.

Saw Enchanted this evening. Not my usual fare, but an enjoyable evening. Predictable, as are most fairy tales, even the “modern” ones.

Spent some time this yesterday entering a contest for a board game. It was an “essay” contest and I had to tell what my 5 favorite games are, and why. Was fun to sit back and make sure I was putting the right games in the right order. Also made me really think why I love these games and think about when and where it started.

Thanksgiving has just passed, and it was a small quiet affair here at Casa di Viluppo. Most of the family was off elsewhere, so it was just the wife and one kid. It was nice though, cooked a small version of the traditional feast.

Worked on some stuff for that #1 game of mine today. New version left out something not necessarily critical, but nice to have the option of. Went ahead and created the stuff necessary to play that way again. I’ll post more when I have some if it up (ya right )

So the weekend comes and I finally get to sit down with TtR:Marklin.

As per usual, Lisa and I had Todd and Rosanna over for an evening of gaming. Since I had acquired a few new games I was eager to try them out.

Every one at the table had previously played a TtR game, so after a brief explanations of what made this different we were off.

The first thing that struck me is that you really shouldn’t do a free for all on the ticket selection. In the previous games you would deal out the appropriate tickets and people would return them pretty randomly. In this game I could see that what the players who are going before you keep in view of Long vs. Short will not just impact what tickets you would keep, but perhaps what tickets you would draw. I realized the first half of this as we were started, but am onl thinking about the second half now.

So Todd drew 3S/1L and the rest of us, Lisa, Rosanna, and myself respectively, took 2S/2L. Ironically we all seemed to keep 2S/1L. So play got underway. The great card hoards started to accumulate, with the typical contention for colors even if people were headed to different parts of the board. I realized a “problem” though with the face ups. We often have situations where people don’t like the cards available and they stagnate as people draw from the deck. This is usually caused by a combination of Locos and one other color. Marklin seems to exacerbate this problem with Locos, 4+Locos, and Passengers.

So, play progressed and some routes started to get claimed, and it seemed that 3 of us were building around Duseldorf. This caused a quick block out when the 3 of us built on the 3 wide 1 train, and then only two of us filled in the 2 wide 1 train, blocking out Rosanna. After a little bit of fussing she started working around the situation.

Meanwhile I had two tickets which worked to create an overall run of Duseldorf to Berlin. Having placed my passenger in Duseldorf I ran the first passenger of the evening along that route. This kinda put a shock into the other players who hadn’t expected passengers so early.

Play continued and I finished off my southerly W-E route. Meanwhile I had placed another passenger in the SE corner, and picked up a few passenger cards. After completing my third ticket, I worked a few more single train routes to get closer to Duseldorf. Hoping that no one else ran a few more passengers. The with judicious use of passenger cards, I ran my second passenger from Regensburg to Duseldorf and back to Berlin. Needless to say the others were not happy with me.

By this time the game was winding down to a close, people taking a few extra tickets, and scrambling to make those last connections. Rosanna started the last round, leaving Lisa in the lurch for one last connection.

Scores were tallied and I came out on top. Lisa was not far behind and would have overtaken me with that last ticket. Todd and Rosanna maintained a respectable 3rd and 4th w/o too large of a gap like has been noted elsewhere.

So, Elasund came in yesterday and Lisa Staci and I sat down to give it a go.

As a learning game for all of us it was a little rocky. We started off on a Wall race, but Lisa and Staci seemed to back off after a bit. I eventually built all nine of my walls.

There were quite a few hiccups on turn phase order, but we eventually got it worked out. Building happened quite well, and there was a few bumps of smaller buildings. Lisa started off the Church earlier than I expected.

Staci tried to start with the big buildings quick. After a bit I managed to break out a building right along the water, not only gaining the 2 VP for the building, but moving me up 3 along the trade track and providing 2 more VP there.

I finished the game with my one and only Church, completing 10 VP. Staci and Lisa ended up at 5 VP each.

Players:
Duane – 17 powered
Steve – 16 powered
Lisa – 14 powered
Jame (me) – 15 powered

I had discovered this version just last week, and we had played Power Grid just the week before. But being a sucker for modular boards, Duane and I at least, we had to give this a whirl.

I randomly selected a 6 tile layout from the chart, we threw in 3 random neutral tiles, “shuffled” them up and placed them out on the table. This ended up with city heavy cluster of 3 tiles on one side of the board, With long connections to a smaller cluster of 6 cities between 2 tiles on the opposite corner.

After the initial power plant auction I ended up being first to build. I had only purchased a 1 house plant and feared the congestion that would happen on the 3way free interconnect tile, so built apart from it. The section I built upon had plenty of cities, but I think my down fall was that the only way out was through the 3 way. I quietly built over in my section while Duane and Steve competed in the “cheap” cities, and Lisa built in the truly isolated zone.

Stage 2 was the clincher for me I think. I really needed to be first since Duane had sterted encroachment into my area and it was already a leap frog between Him and steve in the cheap section. Duane was first however, and he snatched up the cities he didn’t already have leaving me large jumps to get out of where I was.

Coal became scarce and there was some hot contention for alternative power plants as we all tried to get ready for the end game. Stage 3 came along and the power plants slowly dwindled. Steve was in the lead n cities, and triggered the end by building 2 to have 17, while he could only power 16. But Duane managed a 5 city build to also bring him to 17 and win the game.