Game Night Light 10

Last night was weekly game night. I took the opportunity to prepare and test out Hatfields and McCoys.

There are only two pages of rules. This was a rushed game with two errors and one rule that has to be inferred from another rule. The map is clearly from another game because only some terrain counts while the rest is ignored. The unit counters had to be cut out and folded over to make them two-sided.

I went for rum and coke. Fireball might have been appropriate.

The rule problem is that one family's shack can't be closer than 12 hexes away. The first player could plant the shack and prevent player two from placing at all. That's clearly not intended. So player one should be limited to no more than top our bottom three rows.

The second is the "cussedness" rating. It is never set forth directly in the rules but an example suggests that if hit you roll a die and if you roll your cussedness rating or less, you don't die.

The basic combat units with both good fist fighting and good shooting abilities are the Ellies and the Beaus. Gramps can fix the still. Granny has a shotgun. There is a dog and other family combat units.

Granny and maw can call for family reinforcements or to replace combat losses.

You also have a still that produces one moonshine per turn.

Drinking the moonshine gets you "riled up" with one turn of enhanced combat--but poor judgment for some family abilities. 

If Ellie goes skinny dipping, the other family's Beaus move toward her. If your Beau defeats Ellie in combat he marries her and your team wins the game. Or you win by killing off the other family.

Shotguns allow you to shoot at all units in a stack.

Each turn you roll to see which family moves first.

Oh, and page two of the rules is possibly NSFW.

I started to play the game:

But the shifting first moves and the Ellie skinny dipping distraction made it clear that this is really a two-player game because feints and distractions are key to some good killin'.

Anyway, it is now ready for a two-player game night. I've long wanted to try this. 

Good drinking game, I'd say.

Game Night Light 9

Last night was game night. I honestly forgot all about last week's game night by the time the evening rolled around, what with my dead car that I'd been dealing with during the day.

Anyway, last night we played a simple game called Kingdoms.

It can handle four players and claims games of 20-40 minutes. We played a couple in about an hour each.

The beer exchange involved these selections:

Doritos, peanut M & Ms, and mini Reese's Cups provided the snacks.

The game itself was fun. It handles up to four players. With two players you have four 1-factor castles, three 2-factor castles, two 3-factor castles, and one 4-factor castle. With more players you get fewer castles.

You start with 50 gold and one multiplier tile held without revealing its type. They can be +6 to -5, I think. With a dragon, mine, and two mountain tiles that have special effects.

Each turn you either play your pre-game multiplier tile, draw and play a multiplier tile, or play a castle by placing one on the map.

The game goes for three rounds and each round goes until the board is filled.

You score each side by rows and columns. You add up your castle factors lined up and multiply that by the sum of the multiplier tiles.

The mountain tile splits the row or column in two for scoring calculations.

The mining card doubles the value of all multiplier tiles.

The dragon tile negates all positive value tiles.

The two games we played were fun. We each varied our play by emphasizing castles or tiles and by mixing castle value placement priorities. I'm still not sure what the right mix is on tiles versus castles, although I'm pretty sold on the value of using the lower value castles as recon rather than plopping down the good castles early to provide targets for opponents.

There was a lot of planning, defensive moves, adding to your own score, and knocking down the opponent's score. Many more opportunities for "you bastard!" than in Catan.

This might be a good candidate for bar nights some times given the small board and lack of dice.

Anyway, a successful weekly game night that wrapped up at about 9:30. Much fun!

Game Night Light 8

Yesterday was weekly game night. And I must say, I wasn't really up to it. But I decided this was the reason I established it. So in the spirit of opposable thumbs and mindless adherence to tradition being the only thing that sets us apart from the animals, game night!

I hauled out an old game that in high school we could finish during study halls, War at Sea. 

I also have expansions from The General and War at Sea 2. Which is good because I'm missing two ship counters. Luckily there are substitutes available from the expansion.

It's a simple, fun, and potentially quick game. I probably haven't played this since college.

Strategies came back to me as I played. Some too late to do any good, and almost always for the British.

The two sides have different force structures and strategies. The British basically need to control the seas while the Germans need to selectively deny it to the British.

Getting three convoys from America to the USSR are important. Although you can send the convoys to Britain for one victory point instead of the dangerous Russia route, which gets you three each. I think I got all three convoys to the USSR, although German air strikes almost got one and another was almost sunk by surface action.

I thought the British could win this but by the last turn the heavily damaged British fleet could barely take to sea. Even with the Americans holding the North Atlantic.

British land-based air was horrible. The Russians achieve nothing before their battleships sank. And the British lost a lot of ships early in battle without really doing much in return. The Germans only once couldn't repair all their damage in Germany in one turn. But the damaged ship could control the Baltic without Russian opposition until it could return for repairs the next turn.

And while I tried to avoid pushing British battleships two areas, later I really needed to because my fast battleships were sunk. Only 1 of about 8 attempts succeeded. Which was a horrible result.

The only good thing was British ASW. 

I had planned on making a foray into the Mediterranean Sea but British losses were too heavy and British air strikes never whittled down the Italian fleet.

And ouch, the German shooting advantage is scary for undamaged German warships.

On the last turn the Axis cleaned up and won the game by 2--which I forgot to adjust before taking the picture.

It took me about 2-1/2 hours to set up, refresh my memory on the rules, and play the game. Which is three times as much time as we needed in high school. 

But it was fun. I'm glad I forced myself to play.

And for anyone used to playing Catan who wants to try an actual war game this is a nice and easy entry game to try.

I'll do it again next week, with the 6-pack I have saved for the beer exchange part.

August 2021 Game Night

We had game night at Casa Beej this last Saturday. Thanks to Joe, Paul, and Pete for coming by to play and have some adult beverages.

We dined on White Castle hamburgers, potato chips, a couple dips, lemon curd cheesecakes, and chocolate chip cookies of the sugar and sugarless variety. We had the house Labatt Blue Light.

In addition, we had some premium beers left over from last game night. Paul brought his extended-pinky bourbon. And Pete, Paul, and Joe had their special dietary needs met, including some Irish creams of a non-Bailey's variety. It's an experiment.

We started playing before 6:00 and finished up at about 12:30, playing five games. I messed up getting all the starting position map photos but have all the end game pictures.

To be fair, we were all drinking perhaps more heavily than usual.

During the evening, Pete was white, Paul was blue, Joe was orange, and I was red.

Pete brought his special cup of noodles dice. We had to trust him when he announced his rolls. Oddly Joe didn't bring his dice purse and Paul didn't bring his heavy, clanking iron dice.

GAME ONE

Order of placement was Pete, Paul, Joe, and myself.

This is the starting position:

My wood resource was bad but I hoped to reach the coast and add to it. I assumed I could trade for sheep until I could reach a good pasture. And with a strong brick presence I thought I had options to trade.

Slow wood production lost me a shot at more wood as Peter preemptively build on the coast, but I was able to get sheep and build strong coastal presence. 

Joe surrounded Paul and ended any hopes of a link up to get longest road.

Paul was pretty hemmed in by other players and the desert. But he did reach his goal of getting rocks. And in theory he had one and maybe two build spots left.

I played a monopoly card for just 3 wheat but I really needed the wheat I got. I was able to take the harbormaster card from Captain Pete and reached 12 points with that card and 4 cities in the mix. That was fortunate because I could not hold the honor because I had no more cities and no more harbor options to build on. Whew. Joe followed with 8 points including the longest road. Pete had 7, and Paul had 4.

This is the end map:

I'll assume my luck was horrible while other players raked it in. Actually, 2 was pretty good to me given my heavy presence there.

GAME TWO

The order of placement was myself, Pete, Paul, and Joe.

This is the starting position:

I was hesitant to build so close to me but I really needed wood. And my alternative included an 11 wood near the desert. I also knew that nobody would place after my second placement to really pen me in. And since my second placement got me a road and I moved first, I knew I could slide past Paul and reach the coast for more wood and a port.

I was sure Paul would understand the simple logic of my predicament.

I did indeed build to the coast at both ends, securing a nice enclave. 

Paul built his flux capacitor and still had room to reach the coast for more wood since I turned southeast to maintain the road link.

Joe blocked me at the coast but was penned in at his other settlement.

Pete blocked Joe from the expanse near the desert.

But with a year of plenty card that I almost forgot to use, built to 11 points including the harbormaster and longest road cards. Paul had 5 while Joe and Pete had 4.

This is the end map:

Joe says he is working on something to record probability. We'll see.

GAME THREE

The order of placement was Joe, myself, Pete, and Paul.

I failed to take the picture of the starting positions.

But I think I started on the coast for rock and the wood, brick, wheat space. 

Joe again built his wall but this time closed the gates before Paul could get inside, getting the longest road in the process.

Paul had some room to build and promoted cities with his heavy rock presence, but Pete cut off Paul's hope to link his roads.

Pete reached the coast to challenge for harbormaster and had a shot at longest road.

I didn't expand much, but did promote cities and got harbormaster again. Of note, I remembered I had a monopoly card and played it to get badly needed rocks. I was so eager to promote a city while I could (perhaps to defend harbormaster) that I played it before I rolled the dice. And proceeded to roll a 7. 

Did I mention the heavier-than-usual drinking?

But I at least succeeded in getting the cards for a city so did improve my situation despite the humorous error.

Somehow Joe fully urbanized despite his poor rock resources. And with the longest road reached 11 points. I had 10 with the harbormaster card. Pete had 7. And Paul had 6.

Congratulations Joe!

This is the end map:

I seem to recall gettng good wood results from my heavily invested 2 again. But inadequate 6 rolls.

GAME FOUR

The order of placement was myself, Pete, Paul, and Joe.

I failed to take the picture of the starting positions. I'll guess that this was the first game I started with all resources.

I was penned in by the desert and other players. But I at least managed to thread the needle between Pete and Joe to have a shot at some building spaces. I even had hope of linking my roads given the no-man's land of no build spots there. Amazingly, this game I had the monopoly card and a year of plenty.

Paul's heavy investments on the coast gave him harbormaster and he still managed to build 3 cities. He looked like he was about to expand toward the desert which would block one of my outlets while I tried to reach the other.

Joe, too, had a shot at harbormaster, with some new building sites still open to him as well.

Pete strung together a meandering longest road, somehow linking his settlements. Last minute efforts to deny Pete city upgrades failed and then he whipped out the victory point card for 11 points.

Paul followed with 9 points, including the harbormaster. While Joe and I had 6 points each.

Congratulations Pete!

This is the end map:

I can't remember if 2 produced this game, too.

GAME FIVE

The order of placement was Paul, Joe, myself, and Pete. Although technically we believe alcohol placed first because otherwise we have no idea how we did not notice Joe's placement at the 5,2,10 position just one away from Paul. Odd, that was.

This is the flawed starting position:

I again had all resources but with poor wood resources. Pete had a huge section of the map basically to himself. I despaired of expansion options.

But I did make it to the desert and also build heavily around my coastal wheat. And once more I had a monopoly card and a year of plenty. I can't believe they came up so often for me this evening.

Paul was road building like crazy and threatening to be a UN force bisecting Catan when Pete built two roads to end that dream. Which was badly needed because building spots were limited to one that would have to race Pete.

Pete did hold the longest road and had a good-sized enclave with hopes of getting harbormaster given his option to build cities on the coast.

Joe  had two clusters with a path along the coast to link up if I wasn't too desperate for a city along the desert. And he had a solid hold on harbormaster.

I finally started playing my knight cards and despite the robber on my amber waves of grain, reached 11 points. Joe had 9 with the harbormaster. Pete had 8 with the longest road. Paul had 7 points.

This is the end map:

I bought more development cards this evening than I usually do, and may have out-bought everyone else combined. And the only victory point card was one Pete used to win a game. Very odd distribution of cards pulled.

Anyway, we finished the night after 12:30, having decided to play one more game rather than retire to watch Game of Thrones.

But after too long with Zoom game nights, I forgot a key rule. Avoid over-eating the Sliders. A couple hours after I went to sleep I woke up with gut-wrenching stomach pains. As is not uncommon with that food product.

In the dark I struggled to find the Pepto. Apparently I fell asleep after finding it. When I awoke from another wave of gut-wrenching stomach pains I had to turn on the light to find the bottle. It was at my feet on its side with Pepto scattered all across my bathmat and floor, looking like a horrible Smurfette crime scene. 

The remnants of the bottle settled my stomach. I woke up feeling great, with no hangover since I had at least remembered to hydrate.

The stain on the bathmat did not come out.

Anyway, it was nice to have a normal game night again, even if it included gut-wrenching Slider stomach agony. Thanks to those who came by!

Next time at Casa Beej and Joe has claimed October to host game night in South Lyon.

 And a meme!

I really need to collect all the published memes on a separate page.

As always, feel free to add your perspective on how you saw you position, your plans for expansion, or limits you had to overcome--other than the alcohol, of course.