I managed to get in a day of boardgaming yesterday, aided by Rich and Robert; I’m very grateful to both for sitting down for the eight or so hours we were so engaged. We managed to play some really good games (four of the Top 10 on BGG) and I so kept both of them engaged and away from D&D and Gamma World. This is not to say that D&D and Gamma World aren’t fine games – of course they are! – however, I play quite a bit of roleplaying on other days, so reclaiming my Saturdays for mostly boardgaming is appreciated.

What did we play?

Agricola– I introduced Robert to the basic game of Agricola; Rich arrived towards the end of the game. I won the game, but that wasn’t the point: the point was to introduce Robert to the game and its mechanics. Like most games, you’ve got to play a number of games before you understand how it flows and the best strategies to use.

Thebes – in fact, we played Rich’s German copy (which Randy had given him as a present when Randy got back from Essen). The game hated Rich, and he hardly got any really good digs. Actually, it was a very unusual game for me – I participated in some very big and successful digs at the beginning of the game, and so spent a lot of the last year back in Europe attending conferences and exhibiting my finds: 18 points from Exhibitions, which is the most I’ve seen. We were very, very lucky with our digs, and most of the locations only had one or two treasures left in them. Robert did very well, although I was far in front of my two fellow archaeologists by the end!

Dominion – this game is definitely a favourite of Rich, and Robert took a while to adjust to how it played: the basics were easily grasped, but getting an efficient deck takes longer! He scored 18 in both games; one game went to me by about 9 points over Rich, the other ended in a tie! It was interesting returning to the basic game: my “draw everything” deck in the second game was woefully inefficient and the game took a long time…

Carcassonne – we’d reached an uncomfortable time where Robert wasn’t quite sure whether he’d be playing D&D or not, and we weren’t sure when it was starting, so Carcassonne was seized upon as a relatively quick game. I was extremely lucky in this game: the very last tile was the tile I needed to steal a city from Rich and score the 30-odd points that gave me the game. Even so, it was close; only about 18 points in it from first to last. Without that, Rich would have taken the game, but sometimes the Game Gods just like me better. (As opposed to last week, when Rich was playing much, much better than I was).

Through the Ages – Robert finally decided against playing D&D and Gamma World, and so we engaged on a 3-player game of TTA. He had the culture lead for most of the game, but his science was fairly low, and I was able to get a lot of end-game techs that gave me the advantage. Both Rich and Robert had no military to speak of (compared to my 30-odd), but I didn’t punish them for it as Randy did to me and Sarah a few weeks back, instead being content to take a comfortable victory by having lots of nice stuff. I was aided in this by colonizing a lot of fertile places that gave me additional population – very useful! My score was only about 196 at the end of the game, but it was enough for the victory.

Power Grid – TTA had taken almost 3 hours (as it does), so we closed the night with a 4-player game of Power Grid, with Matt joining us. RIch led for most of the game, on the rather expensive German map. We had some big early plants available, and the game played as well as I’ve known it to. I was in a good position throughout the game, picking up a couple of “5” plants that were fairly easy to power, though I lagged behind on city connections. Rich was in a really good place and looked almost certain to win, but gaining his last power plant was the killer: big auctions wars primarily instigated by Matt (plants going for over $70) meant that when it came to building his last few connections, Rich just didn’t have the money; he was so close. I was just able to win, connecting my 17th city with about $5 left. It was agonizingly close for Rich.

While we played all these game, Josh came later in the afternoon and then amused himself with a game of Blood Bowl before joining Mick, Ben, Paul and Josh #2 for Gamma World and D&D.

Next week, we’ll be celebrating my birthday. My plan is to play boardgames in the afternoon, and then the old Moldvay Basic D&D in the evening, but we’ll see how that survives contact with my friends.