Michigan Game Night

One of the highlights of having Nathan come to visit is the opportunity to play some more board games.

It’s not like I don’t have an endless supply of games to play (or even a stack that I own that have never been played), so this is always my chance to try out new things and introduce new games for Nathan to bring back and spread the good word about to his congregation and siblings.

Thankfully Jon and Brian are always more than willing to sit down and play a few games with us when he is in town.

The first game that we broke out was one that has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time calling my name: Santiago.

Now Santiago is now about to win any awards for the most attractive game of the year, but I was very impressed with how much I enjoyed this clever little game.

The idea of the game is that you are all plantation farmers and you are doing your best to have the largest number of workers in the largest plantations. Bigger the plantation and the more workers you have the more money you make at the end of the game.

Santiago takes place over 11 rounds.

The round begins by all players bidding on the 4 new plantation tiles. The plantation tiles come in several varieties and allow you to either place 1 or two workers on the field. The auction process is interesting. Each player has the option to bid or pass. If you bids, then you must bid higher than the highest bid. The first person to pass becomes the Canal Overseer. Whoever won the auction chooses and places his plantation tile and the others follow suit (2nd lowest bidder, last person to pass, etc.).

Now comes the interesting part.

It doesn’t matter how big your plantation is or how many works you have on it if, without water it’s going to die. So the next phase of the game is the Bribe the Overseer round.

Each player has the opportunity to suggest (aka Bribe) where the new canal should go. Other players can support the suggestion or offer their own. In the end the Overseer gets to choose any of the offers he likes, or he can choose to go his own way by paying 1 dollar more than the highest offer.

This is where the game really gets interesting. Also, aside for the $3 you get at the end of each round this your only way to make money. However as an added bonus, each player has a canal piece of their own that they can place any time, but only one bonus piece can be placed per round, so it’s a first come first serve basis.

We had a blast playing this game, but Brian became unstoppable in the first half as he managed to amass a huge sugar cane field. Brian won, followed by Nathan, and then Jon and I ended up in loosing, badly I might add.

From there we moved onto Pueblo.

Pueblo is almost like Tetris, but you get to actually touch the pieces. Each player is a master builder trying to help build the chief’s new temple. You begin the game with a fixed number of colored blocks (each builder has his own signature color) and neutral blocks (1 less than the colored). You alternate your turns between placing colored and neutral blocks with the goal being that you do not want your colored blocks to be visible by the chief (who is consistently walking around checking your progress). Each time he sees your block it costs you a point depending on what level it is. The higher up it is, the more it will cost you (the idea being that more people can see it). The person at the end of the game with the lowest score wins.

Jon smoked us.

We had a lot of fun. Nathan and I came to blows over the moving of blocks after they were placed but after a good beating outside with a 2×4 we parted as friends again.

From there we moved onto playing La Strada again.

Nathan took that one with all of us trailing behind by a few minor points.

Our last game of the evening was Saint Petersburg which I managed to win.

So a good time was had by all.

Brian did the best over all having 8 points (1 – Santiago, 2 – Pueblo, 2 – La Strada, 3 – St. Petersburg). Nathan finished with 9 (2 – Santiago, 4 – Pueblo, 1 – La Stradea, 2 – St. Petersburg), I had 11 (4 – Santiago, 3 – Pueblo [point penalty for post cube movement], 3 – La Strada, 1- St. Petersburg). Jon ended up with 12 (3 – Santiago, 1 – Pueblo, 4 – La Strada, 4 – St. Petersburg).