Wednesday Gaming Report

Last night was game night. Mike, Dan, and I had a great time and got through a good number of games. Below is the report:

Also, I posted a geeklist, just in case you are interested:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/44120

Hermagor:

The gaming session started off with a 2 player game of Hermagor. Mike and I have played this medium to heavy weight game by Emanuele Ornella a number of times before, but I do not believe that Mike has every tried it with two players. I had played once before with 2, enjoyed the experience, and I was looking forward to another go.

After skimming through the rules we got started. To make this game work with two players, Emanuele introduces the dreaded neutral player. But it really works this time, trust me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, at its core, it is a connection/route building game where you move your merchant from location to location trying to setup trading stations based on tiles that you earn in an "auction".

The locations that you establish help you out in a number of ways. First, there is a road that spans the board, and the player with the most trade stations on that road earns $5 at the end, and all other players lose $5. Also, the map is divided into 3 regions. At the end of the game, you count up your trade stations in each region, take the count from the area with the fewest stations, and multiply that by a number (determined by the number of players in the game). Finally, the board is also divided up into smaller areas. If you enclose one of those areas with trade stations you are able to establish a production building which earns you immediate cash and cash at the end of the game.

Of course, your ability to establish these stations is determined during the first half of each round. In this half, a grid is established with tiles showing the different types of goods in the game. You place your buyer tokens into this grid, hoping to exert the most influence on the tokens in order to win them. Tiles can be influenced in multiple ways and the very placements both cost different amounts of money and earn different amounts at the end of the round. The result is a brutally fun, tight, and interesting auction that is a perfect way to introduce gamers to an auction type mechanic.

In the 2 player game, each player is given 2 neutral buyers in the auction round and 2 trade stations in the route building phase. In the auction round, these buyers force you to carefully consider your placements and make an otherwise loose market feel tight. In the route phase the addition of the neutral markets allows players to enclose regions and place production facilities (which are a limited commodity), thus blocking another player from doing this. I have played some games where the neutral player mechanism feels boring, but it definitely works this time.

Now back to the game. Mike and I played out the first round of game with little understanding of the power of the neutral pieces, but we did fight it out in the market. Interestingly, we ignored a major portion and attacked each others choices. However, I believe that we ended up with the tiles we wanted and were soon off to establishing trade stations. I employed a strategy that has worked for me in the past, and shot off towards the right via the central road in the first round. In later rounds, I simply tried to enclose regions to setup production buildings. I also made sure that I was diversified across the three different regions. This worked well, and I ended up with the most buildings on the road, 5 buildings in my least populated region, and a production building in almost all of the different good types.
Mike admitted to employing a tactic that has not worked for him in the past, which was to ignore the road and to forget to complete regions. As a tactic, he followed it quite well, but it did little to move him towards victory. Still, he was quite brutal with the neutral token placements in the market and cut me off from some critical choices in the final rounds.

I ended up winning by a large margin, but I really should pull this one out again soon. I believe that if Mike had placed a greater emphasis on completely surrounding regions that he could have easily decreased the margin of victory.

Automobile:

This would be Mike and Dans' third play and my fourth. We had the rules down (or so we thought) and were soon off to building cards. Actually, I must have gotten it into my head that, after four plays, I had a unique advantage. Because?at the end of the first round I realized that I had handicapped myself $1000 at the beginning of the game. Ah well, I decided that it would be a fun challenge to see how well I could do and we sallied forth.

It is hard for me to describe the overall progression of this game, but I do need to mention that Mike constructed a factory to produce Oldsmobile Curved Dash's.

Or, should I say the Oldsmobile TILDA? Haha, get it?

Anyhow, despite my valiant efforts, Dan ended up winning the game with $4,990 dollars. Mike was not far behind with $4,090. Sadly, I ended up with only $2,930. I had previously thought that this could cap Automobile's reign as the "game of the month," but I am not so certain anymore. I think I need another go, without the handicap next time?

Modern Art:

After finishing our game of Automobile in only about 60 minutes, we actually had a good bit of time for some more gaming. We decided to very quickly pick something out, and found Modern Art on the shelf. Last week, I taught everyone the card game, so this week we decided to try the board game.

After a quick rules explanation, we were off and running. It was actually funny how cheap we sold some of the early paintings for, until we realized what they were actually worth. Once this dawned on us, our auctions became much more interesting. I think that Dan was hurt the most by this initial pricing, and he ended up, at the end of the game, with only $290. I had $499 and Mike had $383.

This was only the third time I have played Modern Art, but I think that I am starting to grasp some of the strategies. In fact, it was really interesting to try to figure out what paintings I should buy from other people based on the paintings I could offer up later in the round. I definitely want to try this again soon.

Villa Paletti:

After Modern Art, I asked Mike what he wanted to do:

"Build something and then knock it down" (Villa Paletti) or

"Build something" (FITS)

His answer was an emphatic "knock stuff down" and we quickly had Villa Paletti out. I taught the game and we actually managed to build the tower up to the fourth level before I brought it crashing to the ground. Dan came out with the win, after holding onto the master builder die for most of the game.

Thus, at the end of the night, Dan had 2 wins and I had 2, but Dan's were with more players. THUS, he will hold the coveted Warfrog Statue next week.