Fourth of July binge-gaming

By Meeple Lady | July 6, 2015 | Comments 0 Comment

My friends and I decided to do a marathon 2 days of board gaming for July 3 and 4. I haven’t done that much non-stop board gaming since I went to BGG Con. We hunkered down for two days at my friend’s house, complete with 2 medium-sized dogs running around beneath the gaming table, and played some pretty epic heavy games.

We all arrived at 1 p.m. on Friday and first up on the agenda was Fief 1429 France. Oh, Fief … The last time we played Fief, a really tense fight broke out between my friends over one guy telling a new-ish player what do to, which was really to his advantage, and other players got really mad because then it was tipping the scale over game play. So I thought we weren’t going to play that for a while, but, two weeks later, here we are. They rationalized that they wanted to play it again because we now had 6 players, instead of 5 during that game we don’t speak of anymore.

A look at our 6-player game of Fief, which lasted way over 6 hours. — A look at our epic 6-player game of Fief, which lasted way over 6 hours.

So Fief is a little bit like Diplomacy and Risk with formal marriage alliances, but you gain victory points by moving up the political track (and becoming king) or up the religious track (by becoming pope). You win the game when you gain 3 victory points. Sounds easy, right? Nooo …this takes hours and hours and hours of game play … for 3 freakin’ VICTORY POINTS! (4 if you’re in an alliance). You can a victory point when your lord or lady gains a title, or when you become elected king or pope. To become king, you need to be a titled lord. To become pope, you need to first become bishop, then a cardinal and then you can be eligible to become the pope.

The game board is built like a legislative map. There are colors that separate fiefdoms, while actual lines separate the bishoprics. There are 8 fiefdoms and 6 bishoprics. The bishoprics are much larger in size and may incorporate a few fiefdoms in it, while a fiefdom itself may cross into 2 different bishoprics. Each player starts with a stronghold, 3 sergeants and a knight on the board. A round consists of these phases:

“Hear ye, Hear ye.”
Draw and play cards.
Collect Income.
Purchase.
Movement.
Battles.
Win conditions.

Each player can have up to four lords or ladies on their board. The men can rise up to be king or pope, while the ladies can be titled and/or get married, or she can become D'Arc, which is a powerful, unmarried woman who can win wars. — Each player can have up to four lords or ladies on their board. The men can rise up to be king or pope, while the ladies can be titled and/or get married, or she can become D’Arc, which is a powerful, unmarried woman who can easily win wars.

The “hear ye, hear ye” phase is when people announce marriage proposals, and propose elections for king and pope. Next up is drawing cards, which can randomly introduce devastating effects such as the plague or flood for various areas on the board. Income is based on how many villages you control. This total can also be increased by owning mills in your villages or by playing cards in your bishopric or fiefdom. Next up is purchase, which is when you can add more military to your villages in order to prepare for battle or boost your defense. Each lord or lady then can only more up to 2 spaces and when you move into a village where your opponent is already sitting, it’s a declaration of war. You roll dice based on the number of strength points each player has and resolve the battle.

Among all these stages is a lot of diplomacy, voting and blocking people from gaining titles. My friends wanted to try a 6-player game since all the previous times we played with 5 players, resulting in alliances and a poor guy getting beat up from both sides. With 6 players, we figured it would be more balanced with potentially 3 alliances. But then our game dragged out to over 6 hours because it was so balanced and nobody could make any headway!! One by one, a player would fall and go sit on the couch to veg out. We ended up calling the game because somebody had to leave.

Specter Ops is a grid-based deduction game in which an agent covertly tries to claim objectives while not being spotted by hunters.

Next up was Specter Ops. This was new to the group, and we immediately got addicted to it playing 2 games back to back on Friday. This game is a 1 vs. all game, similar to Letters from Whitechapel, where you’re trying to find the hidden agent who is moving around the board finding objectives. It’s a sci-fi deduction game on a grid system. Each player can pick a different character with different strengths. I ended up picking the Gun, who had amazing sniper and attack capabilities.

The hidden agent has 40 rounds to find objectives and escape without being seen or fatally wounded. He has a sheet of paper with a map of the board, and he writes down his movement, moving 0-4 spaces, for each turn. If he crosses a hunter’s line of sight, then he’ll appear and the hunters will be able to move toward him. The hunters also have 0-4 movement of orthogonal or diagonal spaces.My friend enjoyed this game better than Whitechapel because, with 40 rounds, you’re not under the gun to make your movements immediately. But then he ended up taking too much time and was unable to make his way off the board by turn 38, ensuring the hunters’ victory. We all really liked this game, with the last game ending at 3 a.m.

Day 2 begins with Battlestar Galactica and Jelly Bellys. — Day 2 began with a 5-player Battlestar Galactica game and handfuls of Jelly Bellys.

So after a short night’s rest, we returned on Saturday at 1 p.m. and went straight into a 5-player game of Battlestar Galactica. We’ve been recently playing with just the base game, streamlining the experience and having less high-valued skill cards in play. It makes hand-management much more vital, and humans endured a slow and painful death, myself being part of the human side. Two awful crisis cards came up back to back early on, and we ended up being saddened to death and losing on morale. Womp, womp.

We all decided to play Specter Ops again on Saturday, and with a 5 player variation, one of the hunters is a secret double-agent. Because I chose the Gun character, I ended up being selected by the agent to help him out, thus eliminating my strong character from the hunting party. It was a good strategic choice on his part, but it was nerve-wracking for me being a double-agent. There were accusations flying around through most of the game, and when I had no choice but to reveal, it was hard figuring out where my companion was going so that I could move the hunters away from him. We ended up losing quickly soon after that as the hunters cornered the agent and killed him.

The Gun hunter character has awesome attack and sniper capabilities. — The Gun hunter character in Specter Ops has awesome attack and sniper capabilities.

We then took a quick brain break and played a game of Blokus, while one friend went home to grab another game we wanted to play. It’s a good quick game that isn’t as mindless as other board-gamer fillers.

Blokus is easy to learn and isn't as mindless as other filler games. — Blokus is easy to learn and isn’t as mindless as other filler games.

The game that my friend went to grab at home was Caverna. You guys know I love me some Uwe, and it was fun introducing that game to the two guys I play games with the most. Caverna is one of my top 9 board games to play at any time. With a 5-player game, a strategy of not doing what everybody else was doing and adding dwarves early on really helped. The winner blew everybody out of the water and the rest of us were far back all within 10 points of each other. He focused on farming while others were mining, and by the time his farming and breeding mechanic was up and running, it left him time to mine and not compete with everybody else.

I love Caverna. It's one of my top 9 board games to play! — I love Uwe Rosenberg games, so naturally I love Caverna. It’s one of my top 9 board games!

Lastly, we played another game of Battlestar Galactica. This game took an interesting turn in the second action of the game, which was that my friend immediately wanted to brig another character. The rest of us were taken aback by it and demanded what proof he had, and he said he suspected that guy of being a cylon. The brig check didn’t go through (nobody wanted to blow cards for that so early in the game), but for the rest of the pre-sleeper phase, we were really suspicious of the guy who wanted to do the brigging. We ended up brigging him just to keep him in check in case he was the cylon. Then sleeper phase happened, and the guy who was the target of the brigging ended up being a cyclon, and the guy who was currently in the brig and wanted to do the brigging ended up being a cylon as well. The humans lost because didn’t have enough resources to make another complete jump cycle as we had only gone 7 distances.

In a blatant attempt for cuteness points, this sweetie pie kept us company all weekend, along with the host's dog, who spent a lot of time under the table. — In a blatant attempt for cuteness points, this sweetie pie kept us company all weekend, along with the host’s dog, who spent a lot of time under the table trying to avoid this guy.

BSG ended around 1 a.m. and with that ended our holiday binge-gaming session. There were a lot of beers, candy and snack foods consumed. There was some running of interference among the uber-adorable two dogs who were there. And lastly, I got to board game with some of my favorite gamer people for two days straight. A win, win for me, even if I wasn’t too victorious with the games.

How did you guys spend the holiday weekend?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply