A few weekend games

Well, at various points in time we had Pat, Josh, Rich, Mick, Jackson, Liam, Sarah and me playing games at Good Games Ballarat yesterday.

Ticket to Ride – Merric, Liam, Jackson – this was fun: both of Liam and Jackson had completed at least one of their tickets (and possibly two) before I put a train on the board. I still won – and that was with not completing a 19-value ticket!
Through the Ages – Merric, Sarah, Rich – awesome game, which Sarah and Rich played really well (and they were ahead of me almost all the game) until the last turn or thereabouts, when I was the only one to play a age III wonder. I also had more stuff for most of the “Impact” cards, so I ended up as a handy winner, but I didn’t think I could pull it off.
Carcassonne – Merric & Pat. By the time the game was a quarter done, I’d locked down six of Pat’s meeples so they couldn’t be retrieved – including two farmer meeples that ended up scoring nothing! Final score was 102-45, which was revenge for Pat defeating Rich handily in the previous game.
Battlestar Galactica (with Pegasus) – Merric, Pat, Mick, Sarah, Josh, Rich. This was a first: Pat revealed himself (Boomer) to be a Cylon on his very first turn. I played “Six”, on the human’s side, but we got absolutely slammed by the game: wave of Cylon attack after Cylon attack. We actually lost *fifteen* of our civilian ships, and died due to running out of population. We also jumped 8 distance, and the entire game took only 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Talk about turbo Galactica!
Republic of Rome – Merric, Pat, Sarah and Rich. First attempt of the game, and it was a rocky start. Poor Sarah’s senators kept dying, and she had an extremely unlucky game. I guess we should have realised after the “Bad Omens” of the first turn. Drought, Hannibal, Hamilcar, Philip V of Macedonia… I was in a dominant position for most of the game, and we called it once the third of Sarah’s senators died (and a statesman she’d only *just* traded for). It was also 11 pm, so… Good for learning the rules, and it’s definitely a game I need to get back on the table, but it isn’t one I can say we know how to play yet.
Hunter, Deadly Prey – Sarah, Merric, Jackson, Liam, Rich – Sarah brought this White Wolf game along, and we gave it a try for a bit before we abandoned it as being just too hard to comprehend (especially with Liam and Jackson). It might have potential, but it’ll require me to really sit down with the rules beforehand and perhaps even create a cheatsheet.
On Friday, I got to play my new games: Campaign Manager, Pillars of the Earth – Builders Duel and Wars of the Roses. CM and WotRs are absolutely fantastic games. I’ll play CM with Randy next Thursday – it plays fast but works really, really well. (Any game where you get to play a card called “The Governator” has a lot to recommend itself). The game we later played of Wars of the Roses, the new Peter Hawes design, was absolutely brilliant. We made a few mistakes – Peter kindly geekmailed me upon reading my session report to let me know about them – but if you like good boardgames, this is one really worth investigating.
Pillars of the Earth – Builders Duel – I lost terribly to Mark at this. I had a string of bad luck, and I also really didn’t grok it. Need to play it more; interesting game, though.
Just for the record…
Campaign Manager – two games against Pat. (My McCain defeated his Obama twice)
Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel – one game against Mark which I lost badly.
Wars of the Roses – one game with Mark, Josh and Pat – Mark was the runaway winner; Pat attacked randomly and stopped us from catching up.

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