On a chilly January day, nine of us ended up boardgaming at my place.
(With images;
cc-by-sa on
everything.)
With seven of us there at first, we started off with The
Resistance, in "Avalon" mode (adding Rebel Commander, False Commander,
Bodyguard and Assassin). The initial setup is a bit tricky if one
hasn't done it before, but I do prefer this to the baseline game with
no special abilities. The spies won both times, though the second game
was a profound spy victory; I did try to warn people against voting
up early mission proposals, but they were keen to try things out.
Which since I was a spy suited me just fine.
The other two players arrived, and we split into groups of five and
four, which never quite managed to re-synchronise. At my end of the
table we started with
Splendor, where
I played worse than ever before (this seems to be a pattern for me
with this game). All the level-1 cards got scooped up, but everyone
else was ahead of me on diamonds and rubies, and I never really
recovered.
We went on to
Quantum (with
shiny new dice). We started off well enough…
…but people kept running away from my slow powerful ships, and while I
held out a reasonable second place for much of the game…
…in the end it wasn't enough.
We went on with a quick round of
Hanabi, total
score 21 out of 25 which isn't bad for people who mostly hadn't played
before, and then finished with
Suburbia. This
was my first four-player game, and things went rather awry: there were
big victory point bonuses available for both "fewest green tiles"
(Capitalist) and "fewest black tiles" (Libertarian). I stayed in
contention for both, so effectively restricted myself to yellows and
blues, which didn't do much to help get my population up. (And a
double Homeowner's Association, effectively tripled with investment,
didn't help.)
I fell behind, hoping to catch up by scoring points for goals, but
ended up not getting any of the public ones (tied on both Capitalist
and Libertarian). My income ran off the end of the track (we assumed
that an income higher than 15 should be capped at 15 - turns out
this is correct),
but reputation was hovering around -2 to +2 for most of the game. I
think we probably messed up the details of the investment tiles, but
in the end it didn't make a huge difference; one of the first-time
players was the runaway winner.
The expansion,
Suburbia Inc.,
remains on my "will probably purchase soon" list.
At the other end of the table they were playing bigger games:
Shadows over Camelot
first, which mostly seemed to be about hunting the traitor.
Everybody was sounding pretty suspicious to me. But they seemed to do
all right in the matter of Picts, Saxons, and even (eventually) the
Holy Grail.
But in the end siege engines did for them, and the traitor won.
They kept to the treachery theme with
Dead of Winter,
setting up the Secret cards to guarantee a betrayer. (Note bonus
zombie figures.) But in the end, the crises and morale finished them
off: nobody won, not even the betrayer, unless you count the zombies
themselves.
A couple of the players stayed for a round of Quantum, augmented by a
3d-printed Death Star.
("Peace Moon.")
Thanks to everyone who turned up, and to my wife who (a) put up with
us all and (b) cooked.
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