Game Night

Another game night has come and gone and boy was it a good one.

While Jon and I waited for Brian to show up, we decided to jump into a game of Carcassone. No expansions, no add-ons, just pure and simple Carcassone.

It’s fun to go back to one of the games that started my addiction and wallow in the pure genius of a great game. This certainly is one of those.

Since this is my first time writing about this game, here is the simple over view. Players place tiles in hopes of completing different goals. This might be to finish a road, a city, a monastery or increase the size of his farm fields. When tiles are placed, all sides must line up with the tiles surrounding them. As things are completed, players score points. Whoever has the most points win.

This time it wasn’t me. Due to my own over confidence and masterful tile placement by Jon, he destroyed my 33 point lead and won the game by 6 points. This game is great for all ages and a wonderful gateway game into the joys of board gaming.

The funny thing though about Carcassone is how many different expansions and even versions have come out (including an Ark of the Covenant version), but when I saw this picture I just flipped.

46 Basic games (72 tiles per game -> 3312 tiles)
46 Expansion 1(18 tiles per game -> 828 tiles)
46 Traders&Builders (24 tiles -> 1104 tiles)
46 King & Scout (5 tiles per game -> 230 tiles)
1 large river with 43 tiles

TOTAL: 5517 tiles

Now that’s some serious board gaming.

Half way through Brian showed up and we were ready to move to something with some more kick to it.

We decided on breaking out New England. New England was the winner of the Game of the Year 2004 by GAMES Magazine, which means very little, but it is an Alan Moon, Aaron Weissblum game which carries a lot of weight with me personally.

New England at its heart is a bidding game. Players are trying to score victory points by expanding their territories and developing it. Each round the starting player decides how many land tiles and how many development cards will be up for auction. There is a minimum requirement of 3 of each type, but it could rocket up to 6 or any combination in between.

Development cards can take the form of land development (3, 6 or 10 vps), pilgrims (1 extra shilling per round per pilgrim), barns (you can save 1 development card per barn) or boats (you can add an extra tile or card on your turn to the auction).

Like all great games there is a wonderfully tense balance. In order to use the development cards you need to purchase land tiles. However, land tiles are worthless without development cards. In addition, you cannot develop land where your boats or barns reside and you cannot place anything on developed land. ARG! So it’s filled with lots of wonderful decisions.

As all of this tension wasn’t exciting enough, there is a great (translation – evil) bidding mechanic. There are 10 gold coins. Players choose which coin they are going to take to use for bidding that round. It’s purpose is too fold. The token both serves as your bidding order and how much you will pay for each item you buy. The highest number goes first, but they will also be paying considerably more then the last player to go.

This game was very close (which is the sign of a good game), but in the end, Brian and Jon didn’t have the shillings to keep me from buying at 10 point vp card which locked up the win for me. Brian, who snagged the 1 gold coin, was quick to point out that Jon should get the 10 gold coin to keep me from buying the development card.

Certainly a game that will find its way to the table again.

Our last game of the evening was Amun-Re.

I still haven’t found time to play RA yet, but I’m a huge fan of Amun-Re.

The game is divided into two halves, the old kingdom and the new kingdom. Each half is then broken into 3 rounds and 5 phases (with a scoring round between kingdoms and at the end of the game).

Each round new provinces in Egypt are up for auction (1 per player). Players take turn bidding on which province they want. If you are outbid, you are not allowed to bid again on the same province (unless of course you have a power card that allows you to do so) and you must find a new place to bid.

The site your choose is important for several reasons. Some sites offer bonuses for their initial purchase, some offer long term benefits, some are needed to fulfill your power card victory point conditions.

Once the bidding war is over, players take turns purchasing items: Power cards, farmers and stones. Players use power cards to score victory points and control the game, farmers score income (which you need to buy things) and stones build pyramids which score victory points.

Next players make their offerings to the god Amun-Re. If the offering is large then the crops are plenty and farms make lots of money. Which ever follower offers the largest offering is rewarded with 3 free items of his choice, and he becomes the leader for the next round.

After three rounds the old kingdom ends and scoring begins.

Here’s the fun part, before the 2nd half begins all farmers are removed from the provinces, but all pyramids are left (pyramids and pyramid sets are big victory point getters) thus increasing the value for the next round. Any provinces not used in the old kingdom are discarded and will not be used in the new.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

This is another one of those very tense games and a lot of fun. This one too came down to the very end with the players only being a few points apart. But today the gods smiled on me and I took home the win followed by Brian and Jon.