Game Night Light 14

Monday was weekly game night and beer exchange.

First, the beer exchange beers were a fine selection:

And the exchange, properly "Daved" for uniformity:

As is practice, we had chips, dip, assorted sweets, and non-alcoholic beverages available, too.

It is perhaps a good sign that the cat wasn't chased off of her cube, where she slept most of the evening.

We played the same game as last week, this time with three players. The maximum is four.

We discovered a few rules we did wrong the first time plus gained understanding of some rules that made no sense. For example, understanding that a contiguous group of hexes on your estate of the same color are a "city" made something else make sense.

Also, while there some grumblings over other player actions, the expletives were more rote like late series, "They killed Kenny. You bastards." It was hard to work up real annoyance.

The biggest thing we carried into this game from last week was an understanding of our "known unknowns." We spent more time looking up knowledge tiles and building types. Which are important for your overall strategy for getting points.

We got pretty good on the mechanics of the rounds and phases, but referring to rules added time. In theory the game can be played in 90 minutes. It took us about 4 hours.

Here's a snapshot of the game as it was being played, at the beginning of the fourth phase:

Again, the larger center mat is the administrative and resource mat. 

Each player uses a smaller estate map to build their cities and hold resources--trade goods, workers, money (silverlings). And when you use your dice to carry out one of your minimum two actions you place them, in turn, on your dice holding area on the estate map. Additional moves are possible depending on your money or building, castle, or ship tiles placed on your estate.

There were some rumblings that perhaps I should have put the table center leaf in. Lesson learned.

We stayed over the 10:00 time limit to finish the game since we were so close.  It can be sped up with knowledge of the special abilities of the knowledge and building types. So in that spirit, here are the online rules to print or put on your phone.

The game isn't really a replacement for regular game night unless everyone gets good at it. One game per night would be the limit. Although we'd have time for other shorter games or Game of Thrones.

And it is limited to four players. But it is fun and worth playing. It could be an alternative to Catan if just three or four show and there is consensus for it, in my opinion. Or it is a candidate for future weekly game nights or even off the books extra game nights if we do that. Hey, I'm a Gentlemen of Leisure with a (mostly) empty nest now.

Just don't tell Klaus.

It was nice to have a chance to actually play the game instead of it sitting on a shelf! Thanks for attending.

Next week I'm going to aim for Car Wars if it isn't a solitaire evening. That's a blast from the past for some of us.