Game(s) Played:
Session - Sushi Go
Game: Sushi Go
Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
Players: 2 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Card Drafting, Hand Management, Set Colletion
TIP #1 – Choose Your Seat
Sushi Go is now my go to filler of choice with more experienced Players. Somehow, Player seating otherwise known as "choosing where to sit" is a crucial part of strategy, regardless of the different groups that I have played with. This is due to there being two types of card drafters that I have encountered thus far, "The Selfish Drafter" and "The Hate Drafter". So the trick is to always try and sit yourself before a "Hate Drafter" and after a "Selfish Drafter" in order to get the cards you want and spoil the "Hate Drafter's" day. Yes, most card drafting games have multiple rounds that change the direction each round but strangely enough the card drafting games I own 7 Wonders, Seasons and Sushi Go all have odd number of total rounds. So choose your seat wisely.Time Taken: 20 minutes
We must have had too few "Hate Drafters" in the group because we had Players with 3 whole sashimi sets, lots of puddings and tonnes of maki. I didn't do very well and thus blame my poor result on Edward who drafted next to me.
Session – Specter Ops
Game: Specter Ops
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi
Players: 2 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 60 – 90 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Hidden Movement, Dice Rolling
Player(s):
I have yet to sit down to my first game of Specter Ops. Mostly because of my negative experience with Nuns On The Run, an older hidden movement game. I should overcome my prejudices with the genre and give the game a try.
Lisabeth thinking "You're going the wrong way Daddy"
The Player count does change the experience significantly and when playing with new Players, boardgamegeek's recommended Player count of 3 is inaccurate. With new Players, you should make the most experienced Player the Infiltrator and go with a play count of 4.
Time Taken: 60 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Infiltrator Escapes – Hunters Lose
Session – 7 Wonders
Game: 7 Wonders
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Players: 3 – 7 Players
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Card Drafting, Set Collection
Player(s):
Instead of reading the situation, I decided to "force draft" scientific & civilian structures. Things were going surprisingly well considering Mo was at the table. I was losing big time in military conflicts but I thought I was more than making up for it on other fronts.
Mo counting and counting and counting again
So Mo ended up one-upping me in the end. He was uncontested in military might, trouncing both Sean and me every round. He was continuously pumping out civilian structures and his wonder was fully built. Sean went a little bit overboard with the resource hoarding and was quickly the richest merchant civilization, supplying resources to the hungry Egyptians (I had the Pyramids & Mo had the Lighthouse).
Time Taken: 30 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winnah – Moses
Second – Justin
Last – Sean
I was absolutely certain that I had picked up the win and even declared myself the winner at the end of the game. In the end it was the small mistakes like discarding a card for money and not goading Sean into contesting military with Moses that proved telling.
Session – Monopoly Millionaire Deal
Game: Monopoly Millionaire Deal
Designer: Uncredited
Players: 2 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 15 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Set Collection
I wasn't part of this game either but it looked like they were having a good time. Quick shoutout to Henry to say thanks for bringing his own set of games. They went through some other light games that I wasn't aware of as we were completely engrossed in our play of the brand new Orleans.
Monopoly: entertaining throughout the generations
Session – Orleans
Game: Orleans
Designer: Reiner Stockhausen
Players: 2 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 90 minutes
Main Mechanisms: Bag Building
Player(s):
Orleans has been on my wishlist since 2014 and so the excitement of finally being able to play it was a pretty good feeling. Orleans is a bag building worker placement game, sort of a marriage of Hansa Teutonica's bag pulling workers and Troyes's worker placement with specialized workers.
Having no experience in the game and having done no particular research beforehand, I decided on a simple strategy of nabbing all the Goods Tiles and building Trading Stations as I go around France. This worked to a certain extent in the beginning until my bag mix got convoluted with too many Farmers and also ended up taking too few Actions because I was too late to the automation game provided by the Technology Tiles. Even more crucially, my error was in not realizing that the number of Character Tiles are limited and if you are late to jump in to grab some as I was, you may not even have the chance to get any. If we get to play another round of Orleans, I will try and do some coverage on "Playing Better".
For now, allow me to present our group's first amateur timelapse video of Orleans! Yes the iPad fell down a few times, the angle is bad so it looks more of a timelapse of Sean's expressions and it doesn't even reach the end of the game... but I wanted to immortalize this new venture after all. Do look forward to hopefully improved timelapse videos.
The wonderful thing about Orleans is its tempo, like a perfectly constructed Open World RPG. It slowly eases you into the game mechanics, then draws your attention to the different sections of the board in phases. Sure you can jump right ahead to the Beneficial Deeds board like jumping into fighting Emerald Weapon (FFVII) unprepared and suffer the consequences. I feel that the game offers you all the choices but there is a linear progression to how you're supposed to progress through the various options available. Good vibes all around.
Time Taken: 120 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winnah – Alan
Second – Edward
Third – Sean
Last – Justin
Admittedly, game day was actually the start of a very long and sucky two weeks for me as the kids fell sick, my phone died, then my thumb drive with all the blog post templates and pictures also died etc etc, which is partially why the report has been delayed somewhat as I had to build up the enthusiasm to do the session justice. All in all there were a lot of positives to take away, we now have an alternative venue, Orleans turned out to be worth the anticipation, I am exploring timelapse videos and we're getting consistent new attendees.
Looking forward to the next meetup!
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