Game(s) Played:
And welcome back to another edition of our monthly meet-ups to teach, learn & play boardgames for the niche group of us who are strangely only free on Saturday mornings. So this month, thanks to the wonderful technology of Board Game Stats, our featured games were decided to be games Gideon has not won at yet… …
Session – Glass Road
Game: Glass Road
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg
Players: 1 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 75 minutes (This Play: 90 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Role Selection, Tile Placement
Player(s):
So Gideon is all out to try and get his first win of Glass Road but standing in his way is 3 time winner Jimmy and 1 time winner Henry, so he really does have his work cut out for him.
The sharks that stand in Gideon's way to victory
Unfortunately they did get one thing wrong, Players who play off the lead Player's specialist card still need to pay the cost for the action taken. I also explained the Water Tower building wrong to Gideon (the building is worth 4 VPs and creates ponds in adjacent empty spaces, not gain 4 VPs per adjacent pond) which totally derailed his strategy. This unfortunately resulted in Gideon losing to Jimmy by only 1 VP.
A very nice 6 VPs from the Factory in Jimmy's Landscape here
Results Of Game(s)
WINNER – Jimmy (20.5 VPs)
2nd – Gideon (19.5 VPs)
LAST – Henry (13 VPs)
Session – Suburbia
Game: Suburbia
Designer: Ted Alspach
Players: 1 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 90 minutes (This Play: 60 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Tile Placement
Player(s):
I have both Suburbia as well as Castles of Mad King Ludwig in my collection and most people seem to be divided between either camp. I happen to sit on the Castles of Mad King Ludwig side, but I wanted to give Suburbia a shot mainly because, this is now on Kickstarter… …
Suburbia Collector's Edition – now on Kickstarter to take away all my money
The only reason why I haven't pledged is because I'm rather hopeful that they might do a deluxe / collector's edition for Castles of Mad King Ludwig as well in the future, and I'd much rather have that. Still, no reason not to give Suburbia a go to see how I feel about it.
My little Suburbia at the start, I rather wasted the Parking Lot but I didn't have a lot of options at the time
And the reason I didn't have many options was because I got a rule wrong where the Real Estate Market is supposed to be refilled after each Player's turn but we played it as after a round of every Player's turns, leaving me with precious little since I was going last.
Every time the green tiles showed up, the interest on who could afford what became very intense
We also used poker chips instead of the cardboard coins, just because, but this is one of the main reasons why metal coins have no allure to me
I also need to give a shoutout to Padawan Minigeek who was with us today, because of her we managed to get a lot more pictures than I could have and some of these were actually taken by her.
This is our winner's suburb! The Waterfront Realty really helped with his already significant income and snagging the Housing Projects pushed his score way, way up
Results Of Game(s)
WINNER – Sean (73 VPs)
2nd – Justin (55 VPs)
LAST – Loh (46 VPs)
I actually quite enjoyed my play of Suburbia today, and to be honest I have enjoyed my plays of Suburbia right up until the end when the game is ending. My biggest problem with the game is actually the goal tiles, what happens to me is that I'm happily building my suburb and then at the end of the game I realize that I was supposed to have the most Civic Buildings or Housing Buildings or the highest income or some nonsense like that, and it becomes a bit of a downer. Thankfully this time I remembered not to neglect the Goal Tiles when we were into the C Building Stack and managed to snag at least one of the Goal Tiles. Sean probably didn't even realize that he got the Goal Tile for most money and still won anyway, sniff.
As to whether I will end up pledging for the Kickstarter, I still have 23 days to think about it. But man if a similar edition comes out for Castles of Mad King Ludwig next year, I'd be pretty pissed and probably throw my money away at that one as well.
Session – Harbour
Game: Harbour
Designer: Scott Almes
Players: 1 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 60 minutes (This Play: 60 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Worker Placement
Player(s):
Check out the Play Better segment!
This was meant to be part of Gideon's challenge to get his first win at as well but he couldn't take the 1 VP match loss to Jimmy, plus he was up till 4am the same morning getting his Ravnica Allegiance pre-release going on. So we carried on without him and played a full game, something we haven't done in quite a long while.
We played the standard game, with no bonus point scoring and random start buildings. The random start buildings made things quite slow going at the beginning, especially for Loh because he did not start with any anchor symbols and two of the start buildings were resource per anchor buildings. This is where Sean's Beggar really benefitted because both Loh and I had gain two resource player buildings in the Alchemist (me) and the Investor (Loh), and Sean got a free resource whenever we used our character building.
It was really difficult to catch up with Sean, especially after he managed to gain 3 anchor symbols and became a monster. Still, given another turn I would have come within 1 VP touching distance of Sean, unfortunately I didn't expect both Loh and Sean to jump the gun and buy cheap buildings, throwing the market totally off for me.
Sean's last purchase was the Bait Shop for a cheap and quick win
Results Of Game(s)
WINNER – Sean (38 VPs)
2nd – Justin (30 VPs)
LAST – Loh (22 VPs)
Thanks for coming out everyone! Sorry Gideon that you didn't make your challenge, I will personally play Glass Road with you next month… … and beat you at it.
Until next time, keep calm and play better.
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