2010 SWAG Dominion Tournament Recap

First of all, sorry that I haven't posted in a while. I'm going to be hosting a gaming tournament over the next 6 to 8 months and hope to chronicle the games here with session reports, etc, so look for new content fairly consistantly in the near future.

Our gaming group, the SouthWest Area Gamers (SWAG), has a decent number of members, but we have a hard time getting a lot of participation outside the core people to show up at events. The organizer and I recently began a series of tournaments to try to help drum up more interest. The following report is from our Dominion Tournament. The winner got a small trophy and the title of 2010 SWAG Dominion Champion.

We had two tables with each playing two games. The winner of each game got 7 points, 2nd place 5, and 3rd place 3. The top 4 finishers at the end of the two game qualifying round advanced to the single game championship.

Ofer, Laura, and I played at Table 1. I consider myself to be a pretty good player compared to the experience level of the rest of the players in our group (though not at all in the same league as the really experienced BSW players). Ofer has a decent amount of experience playing on BSW but hasn’t made it a point to study BGG strategy articles. Laura was at her first meetup and had never played.

Table 1 Game 1:

Cards were – Chapel, Chancellor, Moneylender, Throne Room, Militia, Market, Witch, Mine, Council Room, and Laboratory.

I started immediately with Chapel and a Silver and got rid of a bunch of my Estates and Coppers on my third round. Ofer expressed surprise at my ditching cards so early, and I knew then that I pretty much had the game won. He managed to give me a couple of Curses, but he didn’t run nearly enough Witches to seriously derail my strategy, especially since Laura didn’t add many, if any, Witches to her deck. I added a couple of Labs and Golds and was off to the races. Ofer used Militia more than anything else, but, with my small deck, all I needed was to draw one Lab to negate any deleterious effects. Final score: Me 37, Ofer 27, Laura 19.

Table 1 Game 2:

Cards were – Workshop, Remodel, Spy, Thief, Smithy, Throne Room, Feast, Gardens, Market, and Witch

I tend to prefer running efficient Lab or Chapel decks over the Gardens strategy, but, with only Market available and both Gardens and Workshop on the table, I pretty much had to go Gardens. Ofer let me buy 10 of the 12 Gardens (with Laura taking the other 2) and about 6 of the Workshops. I built my deck as large as possible with multiple buys from Market whenever possible and by using the Workshops extensively. By the time all the Gardens were gone, only about half the Provinces were purchased. I decided, at that point, to buy anything that had a short stack figuring that, since I was about maxed with points and my opponents could still get Provinces, ending the game sooner rather than later would be good. I finished with over 50 cards in my deck. Final score: Me 60, Ofer 50, Laura 38.

Jonathan, Michael, and Marc played at Table 2. I know that it was Jonathan’s first play and that Marc has some experience. I’m not sure how many times Michael had played.

Table 2 Games 1 and 2:

I wasn’t playing at this table, so I don’t know exactly what happened or the cards. I did get enough info, however, to give a brief overview.

In Game 1, Michael was able to develop an engine that allowed him to draw all his cards on just about every turn and ran away with the game. Final score: Michael 44, Jonathan 26, Marc 21.

I watched the end of Game 2, and it was the strangest Dominion match that I had seen. Apparently, all three players had gone Witch crazy the first part of the game and went through the entire stack of Curses. They spent the second part of the game mainly trying to get rid of the horrible purple cards via Chapel. Then came the weird part. They used Thieves to trash a bunch of the Golds (maybe fearing that they’d just be stolen back?). The game, obviously, then drug on as no one had a great deal of money. Jonathan in particular ended up with a very small deck with absolutely no treasure. Final score: Michael 48, Marc 28, Jonathan 6.

Marc and Jonathan ended up tying for fourth place with 8 points. Jonathan was then randomly chosen to sit at the final table with Michael, Ofer, and me.

Championship Table:

Cards were – Chapel, Cellar, Woodcutter, Feast, Bureaucrat, Militia, Smithy, Laboratory, Library, and Market.

Given a table with no Thief and both Chapel and Laboratory combined with my on preference for Chapel decks, the strategy choice was pretty much made for me. I opened with 4/3 and chose Chapel and a Silver. I thought that I was at a serious disadvantage, however, because Michael started with 5/2 Laboratory and Chapel. In retrospect, I’m not sure that this was the case. I think that having the Silver allowed me to Trash more Coppers early, which made up for my opponents early Lab buy.

What did kill me, however, is two early game Bureaucrat draws by Ofer. Ouch! He played the card exactly twice the entire game. Both times were early, and I had a Chapel and an Estate that I desperately wanted to get rid of each time. I think that I could have overcome those attacks, however, if not for a crucial mistake.

It was fairly early, and I had purchased 3 Silvers, a Gold, and one Laboratory. I got a draw that gave me all my Treasures, and I thought “No brainer. When you get 8, you buy a Province.” I’m almost positive that not picking up a second Lab here cost me the games. Though I was able to get another Province relatively quickly after that, my deck started to bog down, and I only ended up getting one more before the game ended.

Lesson learned – establish your engine before buying Provinces! Final score: Ofer 24, Jonathan 21, Me 20, Michael 18.

I Suck at Ticket to Ride

I've now played Ticket to Ride 4 times, and I have yet to win. Is it that the game requires a lot of luck or am I following a failed strategy?

On our Saturday, 4/4, meetup, Mandi joined us for six player Apples to Apples but left us on our own when we started playing the more complicated games. That means we had 5, Manny, Erin, Richard, Nora, and myself for the rest of the day. It made no sense to break up into 3 and 2 player games, so we needed ones that would accommodate 5 players. Ticket to Ride, though not one of my favorites, fits that niche quite well.

I felt pretty good about my strategy. I jumped out to an early lead by building a six piece track, and all my routes until the end of the game meshed well together. They were, however, all short, low to mid value routes. For my final draw of three tickets, though, only two were even possible, and only one seemed plausible. It, however, was not well connected to my other routes, and I ended up not being able to finish it before Erin used up all but three of her train pieces. This cost me -8 points. Still, I was competitive in total points by building, and I completed a pretty good number of routes.

When the final tally was done, Manny completely obliterated his opponents. He had as many or more routes than me, and they were all worth more points. Even if I had neglected the final round of tickets and concentrated on building 6 piece tracks, there's no way that I could have caught up.

So the answer to the question posed in the first paragraph - a little of both. There is a lot of luck involved, but I think that I also am pursuing a failed strategy. Some tips that I have learned:

1. Go for long route early, not the short ones.
2. In terms of both points and efficiency, it's better to use one long track than 2 or more short ones.
3. It's more efficient to draw tickets if you can than to pick tickets up off the board due to the potential for wild cards.
4. It's better to hold a lot of cards than spend consecutive turns building except for:
5. You have to claim choke points early.

I'll try these out next time and see if my play improves.

Shogun at Manny's

Richard, Manny, Cruz, and I played Shogun last night. It was a fun game, but it ran an hour past the 2.5 hours that it was supposed to take. I need to remember to add in serious time for teaching and for the fact that everyone moves slowly until they figure out what is going on. Additionally, there were several rules questions that came up during the game that I had to try to figure out, and I messed at least two of them up (when dealing with revolts, you do not remove the revolt tokens after a non-winter revolt, and bonuses are given to a defender without tokens, not the attacker going against a territory with tokens).

I can’t help but compare it to Power Grid, which we played last week. The rules for PG were much easier to figure out and easier to learn. Part of the difference is that, with Shogun, you repeat a long set of actions a relatively few times whereas with Power Grid you repeat a short set of actions more times. The mechanics, however, are interesting and create a great playing environment once you figure everything out.

In Shogun, you are a Daimyo controlling all actions and troops in an attempt to become the dominant warlord in Japan’s Sengoku period. Each turn, there is a blind auction in which the player offering the most war chests gets to choose a card that will give a bonus in one of the action phases and which also determines play order for that turn. Then you have the option of taking 10 actions, but each action may only be taken in a single one of your territories with each territory only having one action taken place in it. You may:

Buy a Castle for 3 war chests
Buy a Temple for 2 war chests
Buy a Theater for 1 war chest
Tax for rice
Tax for war chests
Add 5 armies for 3 war chests
Add 3 armies for 2 war chests
Add 1 army for 1 war chest and make a reinforcing move
Attack A
Attack B

The winner of the game (the Shogun) is the one who collects the most victory points. Victory reports are awarded as follows:

1 point for each territory
1 point for each building
1 point for owning the most Theaters in a province
2 points for owning the most Temples in a province
3 points for owning the most Castles in a province

Shogun is a nuanced game that requires great attention to detail. For our session last night, I was the only one who had previously played the game, which gave me a serious advantage. Years of experience playing Risk serves me well in Shogun too.

In Risk, you get bonus armies if you completely control an area. In Shogun, you get bonus points if you own the most of a building type in each province. There are subtle other advantages for establishing a secure home base as well. What happens if you tax a territory for rice or war chests and it gets taken before you get your resources? Basically, you’re screwed since you have no opportunity that turn to get your resources from another source. If your territories are safe behind other territories that you own, your opponents can’t touch them. Therefore, your strategy should be to develop a strong home area with no opponents around and then expand out.

Even having an understanding of this vital point, I still screwed it up. I started with 4 territories on the isolated west side of the board and 4 near the very congested center. Instead of abandoning completely the center ones and consolidating in the west, I reinforced two in the center, including putting 5 on one of them. With 8 armies, I felt like the space was fairly safe, so the next turn I taxed it for war chests. Inexplicably, Manny chose this well defended territory to attack, and, since the battle occurred before the taxing, I lost all money production for the turn and thought that I was sunk.

Having learned an important lesson, I abandoned the remaining center territories and concentrated on the west. Richard was concentrated mainly in the northwest and became my natural target. In the meantime, Cruz, who had a great position in the east, started loading more and more armies into his western territories and going after Richard instead of consolidating his eastern positions. By this point, Manny had firm control of the center but was surrounded by hostile forces. He chose to expand to the north, going head to head against, you guessed it, Richard.

Because Richard had to spend so much of his resources defending himself from both Cruz and Manny, it was no problem at all to take over all his northwest territories, granting me complete control of two provinces. Had Manny and Cruz focused on each other, I think that the game might have been a lot closer. As it was, my dominance was virtually uncontested, especially since Richard exacted his revenge on Cruz, my nearest competitor, by knocking him out of some valuable but poorly defended eastern territories.

A couple of tips:

A key fact to remember about Shogun is that it is a lot like Risk but it has key differences. The most important of these dissimilarities is that Risk allows you to attack as many times as you have armies to attack. Shogun only allows you a maximum of two attacks a turn, meaning only 12 for the entire game. An opponent does not have the ability to lay waste to your entire territory. At most, he can advance one per turn, and that’s assuming that you don’t adequately fortify in the meantime.

My opponents, for the most part, did not realize the importance of the rice. If you do not accumulate one rice per province, you are subject to peasant revolts. The more rice you’re short, the more revolts will happen in your territories. If you have a lot of land in the final winter phase, you’re probably going to have at least 2 or 3 revolts. It is crucial that you have enough armies in your most important territories to survive these attacks.

Power Grid Mistakes

Manny, Richard, Nora, and myself met last night to play Power Grid, ranked the 3rd best game in the world by the members of boardgamegeek.com.

It was only my second session of PG, and it turned into my second loss. Hopefully, my mistakes will help you learn what not to do.

In my first game of Power Grid, I narrowly lost due to not having enough capacity on the final turn to power as many cities as my opponent. The lesson learned in that loss severely colored my play in this game, much to my detriment.

Here are some of the questions that I have about my play last night:

• I let Manny and Nora outbid me for Plants 04 and 05, leaving me with Plant 08 and last in line to place my first house.
• Nora, going first, selected the Pacific Northwest. Manny then took control of the valuable East Coast followed by Richard taking the Central Region. My decision was to fight it out with Manny or to claim an area for my own. I decided to take the expensive West Coast. This left no one to contest Manny for the east, giving him a tremendous advantage. I probably should have played it differently.
• With the highest numbered plant, I would remain the leader for 2nd round if I bought a house like everyone else the first turn. I decided not to. I’m pretty sure that this was the correct decision since it let me be first in buying resources and placing houses. Also, it only cost me 10 Elektros, which would have almost been completely consumed by what I paid for the resources. The problem was that I started paying way too much consideration to placing myself in a good position as far as the leader track. The disadvantages to being in the lead aren’t nearly severe enough to make staying back too far attractive. In the end, letting Manny pull ahead too far is what killed me.
• Later in the game, I really, really wanted a plant that was next up in the future market. With both Richard and me left to buy a plant, I took a chance and hoped Richard would outbid me for the one that I nominated. He didn’t. This blunder left me with a suboptimal plant that made me way to dependent on getting massive quantities of coal. In contrast, Manny bought much more efficient hybrid plants that allowed him not to be nearly as concerned with resources.
• Near the end, I had much more plant capacity than anyone but very few cities. Instead of concentrating on catching up in cities, I spent all my money on resources when it wasn’t necessary. Huge mistake. Manny raced ahead to 17 cities even though he could only power 15. I had capacity for 20 but only had 11. Manny won.

In contrast to all my mistakes, Manny, overall, played an extremely good game. He took an early lead, selected plants well, and managed his strategy to perfection. Maybe he should be writing this article…

Pandemic - 2 Player Session Report

The meetup on Saturday was a bit of a letdown. 6 people showed up, not a bad turnout, but everyone left after 2 hours. All we had time for was one game of Apples to Apples and two of Scattergories. I don't consider either of those games to be worth a post.

My wife, Mandi, came to the rescue, though. She pretty much hates gaming, but, when she learned that I didn't get to play any games that I consider to be fun, she agreed to play one with me. I chose Pandemic because I figured she'd like the cooperative aspect of it.

This session was only the second time that I had played it. The first time, Manny led us through the game, so I didn't feel the need to do a thorough review of the rules since I had that prior experience. Oops!

The session at Manny's ended with us being overwhelmed by breakouts, and I was determined to not let that happen this time. Instead of choosing random roles, I assigned Mandi to be the Operations Specialist to build research stations, and I played the Medic to more easily clean out infected cities. Together, we concentrated, in order, on wiping disease out of cities that threatened to outbreak, curing diseases, and eradicating diseases.

We were doing really well, too. We had cured and eliminated all the yellow cubes and had cured the red disease. I noticed that we were getting near the end of the stack of player draw cards and read through the rules to see if we shuffle them and start over or what. Turns out, reaching the end of the draw stack is one of the loss conditions. At that point, there was no way for us to cure the remaining two diseases to win the game.

Lessons Learned:

• Curing diseases is the priority. Though eradicating them gives you a benefit, you just don't have time to do it.
• I think that two player is much tougher than playing with three or four. You have the benefit of moving each of specialist more, but you have less specialists, meaning less abilities and less cards.
• If you're going to play two player, I wouldn't use the Operations Specialist. Because you can only hold 7 cards, you're getting rid of cards all the time anyway. Use the extra cards to build research stations.
• The Scientist might be absolutely crucial. Needing only four cards instead of five may be the only way to get all four cured.
• The Medic is useful but, again, with two players, may be a luxury that you can't afford. The Researcher's ability to transfer cards may be too essential to leave him out of the game.

For next game:

My plan is to concentrate solely on getting the 4 diseases cured and manage outbreaks only enough to keep from getting hoses.

BTW, Mandi did like the game better than most that I've forced her to play. No word yet on if she'll ever play again, though.

Stone Age Session Report

I played Stone Age with Nora, Manny, and Mando at the last meetup. For some reason, I'm enjoying playing it less now than I did at first.

I pursued my typical strategy of taking what was given to me. My priorities, in order, are:

1. Moving up the food production track.
2. New Meeples, but don't stretch food too thin.
3. Good cards for low resource cost; late in game, cards that give me a lot of points regardless of cost.
4. Huts that meet my resource needs.
5. Tools, don't want more that 4 to 6 total however.
6. Wood, good for trading for cards. Need to keep a bunch on hand.
7. Higher cost resources for getting points from huts.
8. Food, I can always throw meeples in the food production area since there are no limits.

Mando and Nora weren't really too much of a factor in the game, but Manny made a strong push at the end by trading in a lot of gold for points. He was able to accumulate a lot of Meeples quickly but wasn't able to move up the food production track enough to keep up with his population growth. It seemed to me like he was going for food almost every round.

His strategy seemed to be to get as much production of resources as possible and convert that into points. To do so, he almost completely ignored tools and cards. The lack of cards really hurt him. By getting a few more key bonuses that fit his strategy, he could have easily have pushed past me. Also, getting just two cards that allow him to roll for a food production bonus would give him 8 chances to roll a 6, pretty good odds. The extra food would have helped him a lot.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he played a little tighter, especially since I made a major screw up in one of the last rounds miscalculating the number of resources that I needed on a turn.

Two More Sessions of Dominion

Dominion is THE hot game for our meetup group, and I got a chance to play two more sessions last Saturday.

The first game pitted myself against JM, Mando, and Nora. I chose to pursue a Chapel (costs 2, trash up to 4 cards from your hand) strategy this go around. Not only was it successful, but it completely fit my style of play.

I started with my normal buys of a Village (costs 3, +1 card +2 actions) and a Smithy (costs 4, +3 cards). The Chapel was my third buy, and I followed it up with another Smithy and two or three more Villages. That was pretty much all I needed.

I used the Chapel to trash all my estates, and, once I got a few golds, all my coppers as well. At the end of the game, I had less than 20 cards, and an astounding 7 of those were provinces. Basically, the only turns near the end of the game where I didn't buy a Province were turns where I drew four of them in my hand to start. The rest of the time, the Villages and Smithies allowed me to cycle almost completely through my deck. I definitely want to explore the use of the Chapel more.

The second game, between JM, Mando, and myself, became my first ever loss after 6 consecutive wins. We chose a set of action cards that did not contain any way to trash cards and did contain a lot of attack cards.

I started out buying a Village, a Smithy, and a Festival (costs 5, +2 action +1 buy +2 treasure). Twice, I misused the Festival early in the game, which completely killed me. I forgot to add the 2 treasure to my total which in turn made me not even think about the extra buy feature. My plan had been to pursue a Garden (1VP/10 cards in your deck) strategy, and a couple of moats early on would have helped greatly. My screwup also caused me to undervalue the Festival (it's the first time I had ever used the card), meaning that I didn't buy extra copies as soon as possible.

Mando ended up winning by a very thin margin over JM. He used the Festival card to great effect, but also seemed to fall in love with the Spy. I didn't use the Spy and, though I agree it has some value, am not sure that it merits four copies in your deck. Truthfully, JM should have won but made one screw up that cost him the game.

He concentrated on getting as much Gold as possible and, on one turn, bought it when he could have afforded a Province. That proved to be the difference in the game. JM said that he didn't want to clog up his deck with the green cards too early. To me, it doesn't matter when you buy them; my whole focus is to get to 8 to buy Provinces.

He was successful enough in acquiring them, however, that he shortened the game. By the time that I figured out my mistakes, it was too late to recover. I ended up not buying a single Garden. Not very good when you're trying to pursue a Garden strategy.

Win or lose, though, I do want to try this strategy again.

Race for the Galaxy - 2 Player

After everyone else left Thursday night, Mando and I played Race for the Galaxy.

Frequent readers of this blog (I think that that pretty much means Ed) will remember that Race is one of my new favorite games. It's quick to set up and play, easy to explain, but the strategy is complicated and varied enough that it keeps me interested.

For this session, I pursued my standard produce/consume strategy. By the time that Mando, who was going for military, laid down his 12th card, I thought that I was too far ahead on points from using Consume 2x VP for him to catch up. He had two six cost cards that gave him huge bonuses, and he ended up passing me by two points. The win was somewhat tainted, however, by the fact that my opponent played two of the same card. Unfortunately, neither of us noticed the rule violation in time to correct it.

I need to switch to a new strategy. Mine worked well the first time I played, but it has let me down since then. I also need to pay more attention to the 6 cost cards.

Wits and Wagers

After Ticket to Ride (see this post), the five of us played Wits and Wagers.

Though I prefer games that require a lot of strategy, I don't necessarily dislike party/trivia games. For example, I love Taboo and have been known to play some Trivial Pursuit in my day. This game, however, doesn't do it for me.

The entire game consists of 7 trivia questions that each have a numerical answer. Each player writes down a guess. Then the guesses are placed on the board. The players place wagers on the answer(s) they believe is the closest to being correct without going over.

Thursday night was my second time to play Wits and Wagers, and it didn't get any better with repetition. I like the wagering mechanic, but I don't have fun playing it in general. There is a bit of strategy involved such as covering the most advantageous bets but not much. The win always seems to come down to the player who bets the most and wins in the final round. Patrick managed to be that player this time.

Ticket to Ride

JM arrived at game night Thursday after we had started Dominion, so, for our second game, we needed something that would accomodate 5 players. Ticket to Ride fit the bill in that regard and is considered to be a gateway game, perfect for a new group.

In this game, players draw Tickets that grant points for completing a route between two North American cities (other sets use different areas, such as Europe, but this one has the plus that El Paso is shown on the map). Routes are made by converting the correct number of color coded train cars, obtained by drawing cards, into a track made by your train pieces on the board. The creation of a track grants additional VPs depending on the length of the track.

In general, my strategy is to complete the routes on the tickets that I drew. I haven't had a lot of success with this method, however. Patrick won this game by using a technique that I hadn't seen previously; he neglected his route tickets and instead built the longest tracks that he could. He ended up beating JM by one point.

Ticket to Ride isn't the best game ever created, but it is a fun time. It plays quickly and requires very little set up time. It's also great for the less experienced players in the group.

Dominion - First Play

Mando, Patrick, Dani, and I all played Dominion for the first time during the Thursday evening meetup. Based on this one play, the game lives up to it's top 10 rating on Board Game Geek.

It's easy to explain, quick to set up, and has such an original feel to it. If you've ever played collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, you'll especially appreciate the game play, but such experience is not necessary to enjoy playing it.

Dominion features three different types of cards: Treasure, VP, and Action. Each player starts with 7 1-count treasure cards (Coppers) and 3 1-count VP cards (Estates). Each player then shuffles their deck and draws 5 cards. Starting with a randomly determined individual, each turn is divided into an action phase where one action card can be played, a buy phase where one card can be purchased from the supply in the middle of the table, and a cleanup phase where all cards in the player's hand are discarded and a new hand of 5 cards is drawn.

Cards that are bought go into the discard pile. Once all cards in the face down deck have been drawn, the discard pile is shuffled and becomes the deck. Thus, the object of the game is to build the best deck.

You have to balance buying VPs, Treasures, and Actions. If you buy a lot of Estates, they each give you a point, but they also clutter up your deck, as do Coppers. Drawing a hand of 3 Estates and 2 Coppers doesn't help you nearly as much as drawing a mixture of good Action cards and Golds.

From the beginning of the game, it became clear that purchasing Golds (cost 6 Treasure, give you 3 Treasure each time they're drawn) and Provinces (cost 8, give 6 VP) as often as possible was the way to go. It also became apparent that some of the Action cards are quite valuable.

The game provides 25 different types of Action cards, but only 10 are played with each game. For our first match, we chose to play with the 10 recommended by the game rules: Cellar, Market, Militia, Mine, Moat, Remodel, Smithy, Village, Woodcutter, Woodshop.

The Woodshop (costs 3, allows you to take any card costing up to 4 during the Action phase) looked pretty good at first, and both Dani and I bought quite a few of them. By the midgame, however, I was disappointed to see these come up. While it's useful to gain that extra Action card or Silver during the first phase, your goal is to get 6 or 8 Treasure per turn in order to buy Gold and Provinces. The Woodshop simply doesn't help at all with this.

The Smithy (costs 4, allows you to draw 3 more cards) on the other hand, is excellent. Drawing more cards is always good, and this one, especially when combined with a Village, is the best card drawer that we had. Patrick and Mando seemed to like the Moat (costs 2, allows you to draw 2 cards and defends from attack) better. I'd rather spend the extra $$$ for the better card. For the same cost, I like the Cellar (costs 2, +1 action and discard any number of cards to draw that number). This one allows you to get rid of any cards that aren't helping you, replace them with potentially better ones, and then lets you play another action. Sweet.

Mando, who finished second only two VP behind me, was the only one to make use of the Militia (costs 4, gives 2 extra Treasure and makes all other players discard to 3 cards). This one is pretty powerful. The extra Treasure can help quite a bit (Mando purchased more Provinces than anyone else), and it hurts your opponents as well.

My strategy was to try to get as many cards in my hand as possible. To do so, I bought as many Smithys as possible and combined them with Villages (costs 3, give one extra card and allows you to play 2 extra actions) and Markets (costs 5, gives one extra card and allows one extra action, and allows one extra buy and give one extra Treasure).

In the end, my strategy prevailed, if barely. If I had to do it over again, I'd probably play in a similar fashion but wouldn't buy any Woodshops. I'd consider buying a few Militia as well. After all, when combined with any card that allows extra Actions, it works as a Silver that allows you to hurt your opponents.

Overall, Dominion is a lot of fun. I expect it to be one of the core games that the group plays because it has enough strategical elements to satisfy the hardcore gamers but is light and fun enough for the average member.

If I had to post one complaint, however, it would be that the Curse (costs 0, -1 VP) cards were never explained in the rules. I did some investigation after the fact and found that we were misusing them. We allowed players to buy and use them like Actions, giving them to opponents. This is actually not allowed. Apparently, the Curse cards only work with Witch and will be used more with some of the expansion sets.

St. Petersburg 5 Player Expansion

If there is one game that I don't seem to be able to figure out, it's St. Petersburg. I'm not sure why, but the strategy doesn't seem as clear to me as the ones for most of the games that I play. Since I haven't devoted the time necessary to overcome my deficit in understanding, I tend to shy away from participating when this title is called out. Steve wanted to try out the 5 person expansion, however, so I joined, him, Kat, Bob, and Ray.

The expansion introduces some slightly different rules to accomodate the 5 players and a few new cards. Examples include putting out 10 green cards for the first round of play, having a circular piece that awards two VP at the start of each round, and the 9 cost New Farmer which produces 3 rubles and 1 VP per green phase.

The hardest part of St Petersburg is all the little decisions that you have to make. Is it worth it to bury that blue card so you'll have a chance at buying a high cost orange card next round? The whole game is one big series of questions on what to buy and when to buy it.

I actually hung in there pretty well for most of this one. I got a few green, blue, and orange cards giving me VP each round and set up a pretty good money engine with green cards. I was only able to obtain 5 different aristocrats, however, which sealed my fate. Both Steve and Bob ended up shooting past me as the end of game bonus kicked in. I believe that Bob said it was his first time to win.

Shogun - First Play

It's been awhile since I made an entry because I haven't been to a game night in the last three weeks. Fortunately, Ed and I were able to make the one at Ray's on Saturday, and our first action was Shogun. Steve had just purchased it and was eager to play. He, Dee, and Ben joined Ed and I.

I had read about the Shogun's combat mechanic, but this was my first experience with the combat tower, which Ed promptly christened The Slide of Pain. I have to say that I like it. It's quick, and it's easy to figure out. Most of all, though, it's fun.

The game involves a lot of indepth thinking, which makes it good for players who like strategy. Having even one person who doesn't make decisions quickly, however, can slow the game down to sluglike proportions. I guess, however, that the same can be said for any one that requires a lot of thought.

While Shogun has the feel of Eurogame with combat, the metagame in my single experience devolved into Risk-like maneuvering for alliances. In fact, the whole game seemed to resemble Risk quite a bit. When we first set up the board, jokes were going around the table about how many bonus armies did you get for controlling the whole continent and who was going to get Australia.

Overall, I enjoyed my first experience with the game even if it did run a bit long. Ed claims that he won because he accomplished his goal of capturing and controlling Bitch'n (actually Bitchu, but who wants to quibble). The actual points leader was Dee, who came in two ahead of me and one ahead of Steve. I was knocked out of contention by a random attack from Ben, who was no where near having a chance to win and who later admitted to not having a clue what he was doing. Playing with him was like playing with a random chance element thrown in.

I need to play more times to get a better sense of how well I like Shogun, but my first impression was pretty positive. From a strategy standpoint, we debated a bit at the beginning whether it was better to control a region or have a bunch of territories spread out. After playing, I would lean toward controlling a region; it's a big advantage to be able to build and tax territories that you know cannot be attacked.

Age of Mythology

The second game that we played at game night, with the same crew - Dee, Ed, and Joe, was Age of Mythology. Though Ed and I had gone over the rules previously, it was our first time to actually play.

There was a slight misunderstanding with the rules at the beginning; I thought that you could only harvest resources if you had a peasant present, so I produced two houses at the beginning. I was a bit ticked off when the rule was clarified.

Playing Greek, I ended up attacking Ed, Norse, in the first round. The other Greek player, Joe, followed up with another attack on his turn, and Ed's army was decimated. Dee, the other Norse player, attacked me a couple of times putting a big hit on my army. After he used a god power to destroy my woodshop, I declared all out war on him.

There are many games where players have to make a decision about who to attack. My thinking is that, if you build up a reputation for being vindictive, it will give your opponents pause about choosing to pick on you. Whereas attacking Ed at the end of the game might have won the game for me, instead I kicked Dee even after he was down. Was this the right move? I don't know.

Dee turned his focus to buildings and economy while I rebuilt my military might. Between Joe and I, we were able to decimate his forces, and I personally destroyed 3 of his buildings. Going into the last turn, it was obvious that the player with the largest army was going to win. Dee and Joe didn't have a shot, but Dee was able to get his revenge by attacking me. His raid of my resources killed one of my soldiers and eliminated my ability to recruit two others. Ed got the largest army with 13 compared to my 12.

The detriment to Age of Mythology is the length of time it takes. Most of the popular games today run about an hour a contest; I didn't time our time for Age, but it had to have been at least 2.5 hours.

Still, it is fun to play. Like Ed says, all the resource allocation games that we play lack a combat element. This one doesn't. In fact, I absolutely love the combat! It has a very rock/paper/scissors feel to it as you try to guess what your opponent is going to choose. I kept going back to the Princess Bride - "but you know that I know that you know that I know..."

A quick funny side note: the Norse Frost Giant seems to be one of the strongest units in the game. He attacks normally with 7 dice, and, on this night, usually used more like 10 or 12. In five contests, it was defeated each time without rolling a single 6.

Overall, this is a game that I want to add to my collection and play again.

Agricola - 2nd Game

Ed had also been reading up on Agricola on Boardgamegeek.com and jumped at the chance to play it at game night. Dustin and Kwan, both experienced players, and Josh joined us.

Since playing for the first time last week, I had done a little research myself and convinced the other players that we should draft cards instead of passing them out randomly. I always loved drafting in Magic tournaments and figured that the mechanic would be fun here too. I was right. Something about it adds an extra element for me. I highly recommend it.

The first rule of drafting in Agricola, obviously, is to grab any Z cards that come your way. I ended up with Game Designer, allowing me to covert one each of a clay, wood, stone, and reed into two food and a bonus point at any time. Some important non-Z cards that I snagged were Slaughterhouse (one food every time an opponent slaughters animals), Woodcutter (gives me one extra wood anytime one of my farmers gets wood), and the Clay Deposit (action square that gives 5 clay. If other players use it, they have to give me a food. If I use it, I can choose to take 2 bonus points instead).

I really meandered through the first part of the game, and, just past the halfway point, thought that I didn't have a chance to win. Then things started to come together. I was the first to get my 3rd farmer and the first to get my fourth. Finally having figured out the farming mechanic, I sowed three fields, which gave me grain and vegetables for the end turns. I also was able to fence in a large chunk of my area and get some livestock.

In the end, I think that the Game Designer is what won it for me. I used it's ability 6 times, giving me 12 food and 6 VPs. I got an additional 4 points from the Clay Deposit. Overall, more than 25% of my total was bonus points, and I won with 39. The nearest competitor was Dustin with 30.

Once again, it seems like getting a powerful card and using it well is the key to winning the game. Of course, it also seems like getting extra people as soon as possible is a major factor as well.

So, after two times playing and winning both, I'm pretty ambivalent towards the game. If a group is getting together and needs a fourth or fifth player, I'll join in (especially if they've already set up the board), but I don't think that I'll ever crave me some Agricola action.