weekend gatherings
Jan. 2nd, 2006 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioYesterday ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ariannawyn held the traditional new-year's-day party. There was gaming, but I spent the afternoon just socializing with people instead. (And eating, of course; it's a brunch plus some.) There were people I missed seeing and people I didn't expect to see who were there, so I guess it balanced out.
Today we hosted a games day. I played one new game, Lunar Rails. Yes, this is a Eurorails-style train game, set on the moon. The map covers the whole moon (not just the near side); this is implemented as two circles with indexed connection points along the edges. It took me a little time to get used to that and properly see points as close together or far away; I'm surprised because I'm usually pretty good at that kind of spatial reasoning. The game mostly uses new commodities, like titanium, but also reuses some of the standards, like tourists. It was a fun game and I would happily play again. It also turned out to be very close; when the winner went out at exactly 250 points, I had 243 and the other two players had around 230. I had spent most of the game trailing; I'm still not sure how I got up to second place. (Ok, I picked up 15 points from being in the right place at the right time on my penultimate turn, but I had thought I was about 50 points down.) I also don't think I've seen a train game before where everyone was that close.
I also played Trans America (a different kind of train game) and Settlers of Catan (4 players, no expansions). The board had three tree hexes meeting, with one of them being an 8 (the others were something middling like 4 and 5) and a tree port off of one of them. So after getting cut off from the other resources I needed, I settled there and spent much of the game pounding trees into the things I needed. Weird, but it worked ok. (Not well enough to win, though.)
Six people spent quite a bit of time on a game called, I think, RuneSpell Bound; it was described as kind of like D&D on a board. (I think either gootmu or demonlurking brought this.) They spent the last three hours being, they said at the time, an hour away from finishing; I presume this was a matter of learning curve.
There was a long-running game of Puerto Rico going during that and the Lunar Rails game. I hadn't realized that none of the people playing had played before or I would have offered to go over the rules for them so they weren't working it out from the book. Oops.
We had nearly exactly the right amount of food for dinner. Lucky guess. :-)
Tomorrow we're visiting withsanpaku and Mrs. sanpaku, who are visiting from out of town. Should be fun!
ariannawyn held the traditional new-year's-day party. There was gaming, but I spent the afternoon just socializing with people instead. (And eating, of course; it's a brunch plus some.) There were people I missed seeing and people I didn't expect to see who were there, so I guess it balanced out.Today we hosted a games day. I played one new game, Lunar Rails. Yes, this is a Eurorails-style train game, set on the moon. The map covers the whole moon (not just the near side); this is implemented as two circles with indexed connection points along the edges. It took me a little time to get used to that and properly see points as close together or far away; I'm surprised because I'm usually pretty good at that kind of spatial reasoning. The game mostly uses new commodities, like titanium, but also reuses some of the standards, like tourists. It was a fun game and I would happily play again. It also turned out to be very close; when the winner went out at exactly 250 points, I had 243 and the other two players had around 230. I had spent most of the game trailing; I'm still not sure how I got up to second place. (Ok, I picked up 15 points from being in the right place at the right time on my penultimate turn, but I had thought I was about 50 points down.) I also don't think I've seen a train game before where everyone was that close.
I also played Trans America (a different kind of train game) and Settlers of Catan (4 players, no expansions). The board had three tree hexes meeting, with one of them being an 8 (the others were something middling like 4 and 5) and a tree port off of one of them. So after getting cut off from the other resources I needed, I settled there and spent much of the game pounding trees into the things I needed. Weird, but it worked ok. (Not well enough to win, though.)
Six people spent quite a bit of time on a game called, I think, Rune
gootmu or demonlurking brought this.) They spent the last three hours being, they said at the time, an hour away from finishing; I presume this was a matter of learning curve.There was a long-running game of Puerto Rico going during that and the Lunar Rails game. I hadn't realized that none of the people playing had played before or I would have offered to go over the rules for them so they weren't working it out from the book. Oops.
We had nearly exactly the right amount of food for dinner. Lucky guess. :-)
Tomorrow we're visiting with
sanpaku and Mrs. sanpaku, who are visiting from out of town. Should be fun!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-03 04:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-03 12:36 pm (UTC)I've never played Settlers, just Cities & Knights.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-03 03:24 pm (UTC)I've never played Cities & Knights, so I can't compare them, but I enjoy Settlers. And when the ports are active it can produce entertaining banter. In this game the tree port was most active, usually to produce wheat (mmm, fiber :-) ).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-03 04:12 pm (UTC)If you do end up trying C&K sometime, I'd be interested to hear your comparison. (There's an online version at asobrain.com, though there are a few nitpicky points in which the online version varies from what I play in person. Still good for getting my fix in, though :-).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 02:37 am (UTC)