Royals, Churchill, Acquire and lots more gaming!
It was great to get in some substantial gaming this past Friday and Saturday, as my weekly board gaming has been hit or miss because of cancellations and busy schedules. I didn’t actually play any games on Sunday, as I took the time to do some errands and watch Netflix’s Stranger Things. I seriously binge-watched all 8 episodes in one day. IT’S THAT GOOD!
I had some friends over on Friday night, and the first game we played was Gold West. I swear the last time I played this game was back in December, and it’s definitely a solid game that plays in about 90 minutes. In 10 rounds, you’re mining and building camps to gain resources. I ended up winning by one point. Woohoo!
Next up was San Juan. This is a card game based on the classic board game Puerto Rico. It’s a much quicker game, clocking in at about 45 minutes vs. 2 hours for Puerto Rico. You are trying to be the first to build 12 buildings and score the most victory points, and you go around taking turns selecting various roles. When you select a role, you get a bonus for that action, while everybody else has a chance to do the same action.
The last game of the night was Power Grid. We played with a new map I purchased at the last Strategicon. The new map is double-sided with either Japan or Russia. We played with Russia. The power-plant rules are different with Russia. Only 6 plants are face-up; 3 in the market and 3 in the futures market. Also, once somebody passes on bidding on a plant after the first round, the smallest plant is immediately discarded. I can’t wait to try Japan next.
On Saturday, I went to two gaming events. I went to my usual biweekly gaming group and then skipped out early to attend my buddy Greg’s game night at his house.
The first game of the day was Churchill. I love me some GMT Games, which makes fantastic heavy war games based on actual historical events. Churchill is a 3-player game in which you’re either Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin.
The game takes place through a series of conferences in which all three Allies are trying to defeat Germany and Japan. The interesting mechanic of this game is there is an element of semi-cooperativeness; all three powers want peace, but if you beat everybody by too much, there’s a chance you’ll lose the game. Like most GMT Games, it’s card-driven, and there are different scenarios you can play. We decided to do the “training” one, which takes place through 3 conferences (You can either do 3, 5 or 10), and that took 2.5 hours. I definitely want to try the longer scenario next time.
Next up was Samurai, which is a 30- to 60-minute area-control tile-laying game set in Feudal Japan. You are competing to get the most Buddhas, rice or castles by placing tiles around those items. The pieces are gorgeous, and I ended up winning because the other two guys I was playing with tied, so victory fell to me. Shoot, I’ll take it!
Then I left for Greg’s and played a couple games of Secret Hitler. This is definitely a fun hidden-role game! In each round, the president picks a chancellor to enact laws (either liberal or fascist), but you don’t know who is on your side. The side that passes 5 laws first wins. Plus, there’s something supremely hilarious about accusing everybody around the table of being a fascist pig!
I then learned to play Mondo. This is a timed simultaneous tile-laying game in which you’re trying to create an environment. You gain points for animals, completed environments and matching terrain. You play 3 rounds, each lasting 7 minutes, which go by so quickly! The first player to complete their world gets 4 points, the next 3, then 2 and 1. My first round I did so, so horribly and ended up getting -1! The running joke was that on my second round, I finished my map second, and I ended up getting 3 points, which immediately already put me ahead of my last round.
I then joined a 6-player game of Acquire. Acquire is so old-school! It’s a tile-placement stock-buying game. Players are investors building hotels and purchasing stocks in various hotels. As hotels grow, mergers can happen, and if you’re a majority stockholder for a hotel being swallowed up by a bigger chain, you get a cash bonus, and then you can sell your stock for cash or stock of the new company. The person with the most money at the end of the game wins. In a 6-player game, we found that stocks ran out quickly, and during mergers, the 6th person usually ended up getting shafted.
I then joined a 4-player game of Royals. (Cue the Lorde song! Fact: You cannot play this game without getting that song stuck in your head.) This is a game I’ve been wanting to play in a long time! I did a demo of this game at BGG Con, and it’s been out of print until fairly recently. You draw cards to be able to place your cubes on influential people on various places on the map. You gain victory points by being the first person at a location, the first to place cubes in all cities in a country, and for placing cubes on all different types of people. Plus, there are three scoring phases in the game. I ended up losing the game by 4 measly points! Good times.
Lastly, I played one last game before ending night around 1 a.m.: Box of Rocks. Yep … it’s a 5-minute trivia game where you find out if you’re smarter than a box of rocks. Ha! Trivia answers are either 0, 1 or 2, and there’s a box where you shake rocks. The rocks will give an answer of 0, 1 or 2, and whoever is correct advances. First to answer 3 questions correctly wins the game. This made me laugh so hard! And in case you were wondering, I totally beat the rocks — definitely my proudest moment of the night!
And that’s how I spent my weekend. What did you guys all do?