by John Kanost
12 DecemberHuge night at the comic store. We arrived "early" about five minutes til 6:00 PM, and found a huge crowd in the back room already setting up to play Letters from Whitechapel. All told, we had 18 gamers packed around three tables, which might have set a new record for Monday game night attendance.
Game: King of Tokyo
George's two sons Charlie and Freddy were waiting for a game, as was one of the newcomers to game night, a young man named Skyler. His two friends, Vanessa and Alexis, were content to watch while he joined us for a slightly over-stuffed game of King of Tokyo. We have both Kot and King of New York along with both of their Power Up expansions stuffed into one box now, so we had plenty of monsters to go around. Scott also joined Jonathan, Matthew and me to bring our player count to 7.
The starting player roll came down to Charlie and Matthew, and after several more tied roll-offs, Charlie was finally decided on as our starting player by the Chwazi app on my phone. Charlie, playing as Drakonis, entered Tokyo on his first turn, and Skyler, playing Meka Dragon next in turn order, quickly followed him into Tokyo Bay. Matthew came next, playing his usualy favorite, Cyber Bunny. The attacks on the monsters invading the city began, but they stubbornly refused to vacate the premises. After Matthew my turn came; I was playing Alienoid. After me were Freddy playing Captain Fish, Jonathan on Mega Shark, and Scott as Iron Rook.
Skyler was the first monster to fall, which was unfortunate in a large-player-count game that continued on for some time after his monster succumbed to the claws. The game went on at six players for quite some time after that, until Freddy's Captain Fish kicked the bucket. After even more brawling, both I and Scott found ourselves sitting in Tokyo / Tokyo Bay at 18 VP ... hoping to hold out for a win. I was at 6 HP and Scott at 3. Charlie's turn ended with me at 4 HP, with only one player, Matthew, standing between me and the win. Wouldn't you know it; he rolled five claws, enough to end me and take Scott down to 2. Scott perished soon afterwards, followed a short while later by Charlie.
It was down to the brothers Jonathan and Matthew. Jonathan was gunning heavily for a last-monster-standing win, but couldn't quite get there before Matthew's victory points surpassed 20 on his final roll of three 3's.
Game: PitchCar
Impressed that Skyler and his friends had waited through the remaining hour-plus of King of Tokyo, I decided we needed something that didn't involve player elimination for our final game of the night. PitchCar delivers the fun, and we now have our Extension to make things even more interesting. I set up one of the tracks shown in the Extension rules, and we began an eight-player game. Jonathan sat this one out so that both Vanessa and Alexis could join in.
The course was long, and had a couple of bottlenecks to content with, so qualifying laps took a bit time. After all was said and done, our pole positions were: First, Scott pitching the green car. Second, Skyler in the pink. Third, Vanessa driving black. Fourth, Freddy on blue followed by his brother Charlie driving the Tan card in Fifth. Matthew in the Orange car came next, followed by me in the Yellow car. Last but not least, Alexis in the Red car.
With such a large group, we decided to shorten the race by only completing two laps and not requiring a full turn to return to the track after fly-offs. Scott nearly gave up his first-place spot right away by forgoing to aim for the chute of the first hairpin turn, instead attempting the outside area that barely had room for the car. He did fall off the track, but thanks to our rules laxness was able to continue without losing too much of his lead. All the other players opted to take the obvious way through, resulting in a massive pileup at the start of the race as players advanced through the narrows one car at a time.
Something similar happened near the end of the lap, since we had the overpass / underpass tunnel set up and some drivers had trouble making it into the opening. Eventually everybody got through. By the start of the second lap, the cars were more spread out. Scott and Skyler were fighting over the lead, but Freddy thanks to one good pitch near the beginning of the second lap passed up both of them and began to put some good distance between his car and second place. Both Vanessa and Alexis were forced to drop out of the race early near the beginning of their second laps, but Matt jumped in and took over the Black car. He'd finished up his game of Colt Express and had been wanting to play PitchCar again. Vanessa's car was in last place when Matt took over, but he managed to end the race in fifth.
The final scores were: First place Freddy (blue), second place Skyler (pink), third Scott (green), fourth John (yellow), fifth Matt/Vanessa (black), sixth Matthew (orange) and seventh Charlie (tan). Red didn't finish the race.
15 December
Tonight was a Magic: The Gathering - Commander night at our pal Jeremy's house. Along with us were invited Brandon, Mike, Pete, and Zach, but in the end only Zach was able to make it, giving us five players including me and my sons.
Game: Magic: The Gathering (Commander format)
We wound up playing three games; the first two using the "Usurper" add-on rules which is basically playing Commander with the hidden roles and agendas from BANG! Instead of a Sheriff, you have a King; deputies equate to the King's Bodyguard, the renegade is the Traitor, and the outlaws are Assassins. In the first game, I found myself on the Assassin team with Zach, who was playing a Ghave, Guru of Spores infinite combo deck. I was playing Azami, Lady of Secrets and was mana-deprived the entire game, never getting above three lands. But I still found myself on the winning team when Zach comboed off and took everybody out in one turn.
In game two, I became the King and switched to my Ephara, God of the Polis blue-white blink control deck. This was a long and interesting game; I found myself unsure of who was who the entire game as no one ever realy attacked me, and Jeremy, who turned out to be my bodyguard, actually did the most damage to my strategy by playing Sheoldred (well, a Body Double that mimicked Sheoldred, anyway). Based on their actions, I had Jonathan and Matthew figured for my Bodyguard and Traitor, but Matthew turned out to be an Assassin. Jonathan, playing Xenagod again, built up a huge powerhouse and then asked me who I should kill, so I sicced him on Jeremy first, then Zach and finally Matthew. Jeremy kept warning me that he was on my side and I was shooting myself in the foot, but that's what they all say, right?
When Jonathan finally killed Matthew, I asked him if we won, and he said "no" at which point I finally knew him as the Traitor. Fortunately, I'd JUST drawn into the card I needed to lock down his deck; good old Stonehorn Dignitary. I already had Deadeye Navigator in play and plenty of mana. Jonathan tried to kill the Dignitary using the ability on his Gruul Ragebeast, but I had enough flickering mana up to protect it until I got my Crystal Shard out, giving me a way to protect it for 1 mana per turn by simply bouncing it to my hand when it was targeted. Jonathan conceded the game at that point.
The third game we decided to just play a regular 5-player melee game, but didn't have time to finish it. It looked good for a Jonathan win as the table foolishly accelerated him to turn 7 on turn 2 by letting him get five lands out with Tempt with Discovery. But I was playing with Azami again, and managed to hold him in check with counter magic long enough that Zach had a chance to build up a 48/48 Scavenging Ooze in his Vorel deck; he then played Thassa, God of the Sea, made the Ooze unblockable, and took Jonathan out of the game on the penultimate turn. We ran out of time at that point; Jeremy took the final turn, drew his card just to see what it was, and then declared the game over.
17 December
Game: Orléans
Today I finally got around to trying out one of the solo scenarios from the Orléans: Invasion expansion. "The Dignitary" was the name of the scenario I played. In this particular game the goal is to get 8 citizen tiles (or 7 if you want to play it in "easy" mode); there are no goods, a limited number of followers of each type, and you start with no money. Instead of playing with random events every round, there is a pre-programmed set of 16; if you fail to acquire that eighth citizen by the end of the final round, you've lost.
There are five cities on the map where citizens are placed, and one way to acquire them is to travel to those cities in the course of moving your merchant and building guild halls. (There are no points associated with this, but some of the events pay out for your guild halls, so it is worthwhile building them anyway.)
I didn't think I was going to make it, but I managed to acquire my eighth citizen during the fifteenth round!
18 December
Today was The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast's annual Christmas party at Beermongers in Dallastown. I had church in the morning (we put on our annual Christmas musical program) so wasn't able to make it there until around 1:30, and only had until 6:00 to get in a game. I was hoping to get a chance to sit down and learn Trickerion from Chris Miller, but when I arrived he was already in the midst of a game of Railways of America that had quite a bit of time left to complete. In the other room, I found [user=VictorTheGeek]Victor[/user], Chris and Peter chatting about what to play, so I decided to jump into a game with them, especially when I saw what they were pulling out...
Game: Great Western Trail
When I first heard about Great Western Trail, I wasn't all that interested since Western-themed games in general have never grabbed me. But after listening to both the Blue Peg, Pink Peg gang and then The Secret Cabal guys on their most recent episode give this game high praise, I knew I had to at least give it a whirl.
In Great Western Trail, players are cattle ranchers looking to build a profitable business while repeatedly driving cattle from their ranches across the titular trail to the Kansas City where they'll sell their cattle for profit and rewards. The game board itself is the trail; a rondel of action select spaces interspersed with various hazards, Indian reservations, and opportunities to improve.
Your herds of cattle take the form of a deck of cards, which you will add to and possibly winnow through the games' deck-building mechanism. Many of the various action spaces along the trail give you opportunities to sell off cattle for immediate cash rewards, which can be spent on a variety of actions, including the chance to construct your own building along the way, give you exclusive places to conduct business and sometimes requiring the other players to pay to pass.
Your personal player board has a variety of options for customizing and improving your game engine--the engine-building was probably my favorite aspect of this game. You'll be able to move discs from your board to claim rewards on the main board while opening up additional actions to take. You'll also be able to hire workers to add to your board: cowboys, craftsmen, and conductors, all of which serve various purposes when taking action spaces on the main board. Cowboys are needed to buy better cattle cards for your deck; craftsmen let you construct new and better structures on the board, and conductors advance your personal locomotive down the rail line from Kansas City.
At the end of the trail/rondel is Kansas City, where every player always ends up. The goal here is to craft a hand of non-matching cattle cards; the higher the values the better. Matches are not scored, so it's best to have each type of cow in your hand to be unique. However much your unique cattle add up to, adding in spent "influence" points you can ship your cattle that far down the rails from Kansas City, potentially getting as far west as San Fransisco for the highest possible bonus points.
Each time a player advances to Kansas City, new hazards and teepees will be placed, and new workers will be placed into the hirable queue, advancing a marker down the board each time a row fills up. This marker determines the game end; whoever advances it off the bottom of the board will collect a 2-point bonus and each player after them will get one final turn before scoring. Final scoring looks at a variety of different point-scoring possibilities--this is certainly a point-salad style game.
I really enjoyed the game. I didn't really understand what I was doing right away and had to have many things explained to me more than once; luckily for me I was the only completely new player in the game; Victor taught and Chris and Peter had both played at least once before. For me at least this was one of those games that just "clicked" after a while and once I began to understand it, I could see all kinds of possibilities. To my surprise, I won--by a LOT. My final score was 18 points ahead of Victor, who took 2nd place. I owed it largely to acquiring quite a few high-value cattle cards to add to my deck, and then being fortunate enough to get them into my scoring hand for Kansas City two or three times, which in turn made me a lot of cash and allowed me to claim quite a few scoring bonuses.
The best thing was just enjoying the game, however. I never expect to win a game on my first play, and while it was awesome to win by such a landslide, I more importantly had fun doing it. Definitely a game I want to add to my collection at some point!
