Opening - Lords of Vegas | Session - McBoardgamers S01E02 (Agricola, Lords of Vegas, Grass, Smash Up)

22nd of September 2013 (Sunday)

Game(s) Played:
Agricola

Lords Of Vegas

Grass

This is awfully late but real life has this tendency to catch up with me as I get older. Sigh. Still, better late than never, and I really hope that "never" has a possibility of zero until I'm too old to type. Hopefully by then we'd have accurate voice typing apps, I bet that'd bring back a surge in blogging too. Well enough of my personal banter and on with today's post. Before I cover McBoardgamers S01E02, here's some pictures from the unboxing of Lords Of Vegas with my lovely assistant, Padawan Minigeek!

Padawan Minigeek sits in her chair ready to inspect the merchandise

Lords Of Vegas comes with a board! "Must say no to deck building games" & tiles! & money! & property cards! Wait... Is this Monopoly? Padawan Minigeek ignores rhetoric and examines the many coloured dice instead

What a nice looking board!

Good looking boards have good looking backs too! At this point Padawan Minigeek demands that the dice bag be opened

Red is Padawan Minigeek's favourite colour & this is the official picture of her throwing her first die! The crowd goes wild!

To celebrate she goes double or nothing with one blue and one red die

A sample pic of a game in its first few turns, although not entirely necessary since we already played Lords Of Vegas in this upcoming session!

Thanks Padawan Minigeek! See you next time!

Today we had Joseph, who is a regular in Gideon's group, join us for the first time. Our first game had Gideon, Matthew, Joseph, Milo & Justin (not me, another Justin) competing for best farm of Agricola (which apparently is Latin for "farmer"). Being mostly new to the game, they played the family version without minor improvements & jobs with me taking them through the first few rounds before Milo (the resident expert farmer) brought them through to the finish.

Milo Sensei illustrating how a pasture looks like

Milo giving a tutorial on major improvements, Matthew was staring into space thinking 10 moves ahead 'cos he won at the end

I wasn't there all the time, being busy high rolling at the Vegas strip with Jimmy, Da Panda & Mo, but took a few photos of in-game progress and noted some small laughter although that was more or less drowned out by the mighty exclamations & protestations of our Gods of Gamblers (Da Panda & Mo). Feedback suggested Agricola might have been too heavy and a gateway euro would have been easier to palate considering a lot of us are not actually eurogamers.

On our side, we had a false start with Lords Of Vegas which was my fault entirely where we forgot to get $1m from lots with just our clear chips on it, resulting in very slow initial cash inflow. Rectifying this, we reached levels of $40m at points namely because everyone caught on to the strategy of building casinos in the colours that had yet to be revealed.

I think this was the play which we had errata and rather than continuing we restarted because it'll become a loser's excuse at the end

Mo was the first to catch on to colour tile limits and quickly had the purple casino tiles cornered such that the only way to gain control over the massive casino block in the middle left (see below) was to do a very expensive reroll (I believe it was upwards of $27m at one point). This saw Da Panda, Mo & me doing $20m ++ rerolls each with varying results. Da Panda blames the fact that she had to teach Grass and so was distracted from the win but we all know that it is just an excuse :P

You can see the purple monster block on the middle left starting to form

Here it is in all its horrible glory and causing Da Panda head pain

Well, guess who won in the end?

Yes, the non-confrontational player, Jimmy pulled the win over our eyes

Da Panda's friends joined us a little late so I introduced Grass, a game that is just theme through and through although not recommended for minors. Between close friends, it is a pretty fun filler that has lots of take that elements in it.

Stonehigh is and always will be a hilarious card

Oh and the siblings brought cake to celebrate my birthday! They were sure to remind me that I'm 1 year away from the big three-O

Just for fun, here's a pic of Padawan Minigeek having my birthday lunch with me, just the two of us and she's enjoying her H2O

My siblings got me a birthday present and it turned out to be Smash Up! Mo was free that afternoon so he joined me in the unboxing and to play a few rounds whilst Padawan Minigeek had her nap.

It is indeed total awesomeness!

Can do a bit of product placement for my company as well

>
That's the rulebook, not the cover

This is how you know that a gazillion expansion are coming soon, and in fact are already out with the Cthulhu expansion being very hotly anticipated

I'm playing the Alien Zombies on my side, I was banned from playing Aliens henceforth

This was one from my Pirate Ninjas game, didn't use the Ninjas as well as I should have... I blame my freshly opened Uncommon Common playset of Avacyn Restored *woot*

Results Of Game
Game 1: Jus 13 Mo 8
Game 2: Jus 11 Mo 15
Game 3: Jus 15 Mo 18

I'm taking a break in October so S01E03 will be without me and the group is going to try and meet in KFC because McDonald's is just too warm for us. We'll have to call ourselves, KFCboardgamers... KFCgamers? Boardgamers FC? Hmm... Leave a comment if you have an idea.