Wednesday Gaming Recap

I have to admit, the thing that I hate most about these "session recaps" is the opening statement. I am under this mistaken impression that it is important to segway into the good stuff. Perhaps this time I will take a different approach. So, here we go:

Mike, Jef, Dan came over for gaming. Mike and Jef arrived before Dan. This is what we played.

(BTW, that sucked. I won't do that again.)

Schwarzarbeit: I plan on talking about this game in greater detail on the next Dice Tower podcast and I have published a detailed review of the game on BoardGameNews.Com. So if you are interested in a game description, just check out those sources. Mike had played before, but Jef was new to the game. We ended up playing two games, as each one only takes about 30 minutes. I ended up winning both games, though it is largely because I denounced many more workers than Mike and Jef. This is pretty important to do in the game, much more than it may seem at first as you can get away without denouncing anyone during the game. It probably works best with 3 players, as the information overload that comes with deduction games is overwhelming with more. So, I'm glad we played and I will probably bring it out again soon.

Jungle Jam: After eating, we still had about 30 minutes to go before Dan was scheduled to arrive, so we pulled out Jungle Jam. Jungle Jam is a cheap ripoff of Jungle Speed. But, I picked it up cheap at Ollies and I don't feel the need to purchase the other game. Sorry. Anyhow, the goal of the game is to grab the totem in the center of the table faster than the other player. When you need to grab the totem is determined by cards with symbols on them that you flip over on your turn. If your symbol matches another player's symbol the two/three of you enter into a jam and have to grab the totem. The loser takes the other player's cards and adds them to their stack. It's fun, quick, and dangerous. We played three games, of which I won 2.

Brass: Once Dan arrived, we were ready to go with the "meat" of the night...Brass! I was looking forward to trying a new strategy, though it really didn't work out that way. What I did do was to quickly churn through my lower tech level cotton mills so that I could get tech level 3 mills out in the canal era. Sadly, I was unable to ship these mills in that era, an error that set me back for the rest of the game (and cost me first place). I was in a bad place for most of the rail era, taking out way too many loans and riding low on the income track. Still, my high tech level mills paid out in the end, and I was only three points behind Dan for first place.