GNN 2005.01 Session Report
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Game Night North v2005.01
April 13th, 2005
Host: JimG
Guests: DanD, GeorgeP, Kieron, JeffL, DaveF and Troy
Zendo
While waiting for everyone to arrive, the group played a couple of rounds of a deduction game called Zendo as an 'appetizer.' Each round, one player is the 'master' and the other players are the 'students.' The master draws a rule card or writes down a rule and then proceeds to build 2 models (koans) on the table - one that follows the rule and another that does not. The koans are built from pyramid shaped pieces that vary in size, color and number of pips. The rule can refer to any attribute of the pyramids as well as their orientation and relationship to other pyramids in the koan. The students then try do deduce the rule by taking turns building a koan of their own.
A lot of good fun was had as the group chided each other for obvious incorrect answers (e.g. we'd occassionally make guesses already eliminated by configurations previously built by players in order to guess), lamented the difficulty of trying to figure out the criteria and chuckled as we offered our guesses.
The best part of the game is that the students must form the question thusly: "Master, a koan is of the Buddah nature if and only if...". Troy still hasn't figured out how the "if and only if" part works.
HeroScape
The group split into two tables. Kieron and Troy played HeroScape. They played the last scenario (To Take Barrenspur) with the Migol's Tomb Battlefield. This was Troy's first game. Kieron had Raelin the Kyrie Warrior, Roman Archers, Airborne Elite, and Mimring. Troy had Deathwalker 9000 (DW), Zettian Guards, and Taelord the Kyrie Warrior.
Kieron flew Mimring onto the plateau first turn, and missed Taelord a couple times as he flew up to the glyph of summoning, using it to bring the DW right next to Mimring. The two of them made short work of Kieron's dragon.
Luckily, on only their second roll, Kieron's Airborne Elite dropped in the water, and lobbed their volley of grenades onto the adjacent DW and Taelord, almost taking out Taelord (who then flew to get healed, after which the Roman Archers quickly took him out with their special volley attack).
Troy's DW used his explosive attack to take out Kieron's Roman Archers (since they have to be adjacent to use their special attack - his explosive rounds were particularly helpful), while the Airborne Elite scattered and pulled back to be safe. A very unlucky roll by Troy's DW (all blanks) let him die to a mass Airborne attack the next turn, leaving Troy with only the 2 Zettian Guards.
A long range snipe by two Airborne took out one of the Guards, at which point Troy conceded (his lone Guard didn’t stand a chance against Kieron's full set of Airborne Elite , backed up by undamaged Raelin).
HeroScape has beautifully detailed game pieces, straight forward rules, fun combat with plenty of dice rolls. A good GTF game!
Alhambra
DanD, GeorgeP, JeffL, DaveF and JimG played a session of Alhambra. This was the first play for everyone except DaveF and JimG. Alhambra is a rethemed version of Stimmt So!. Instead of buying shares of stock in companies though, you are acquiring different types of buildings (Towers, Gardens, etc) to add to your palace (Alhambra). Both share the same interesting mechanic in that, if you can pay the exact amount for an item, you get to take another turn. This means you have the potential to acquire up to 4 items in a single turn. Alhambra adds a tile-laying mechanic to the game. When you buy a building, you won't be able to score it unless you can legally add it to your existing palace layout -- sides that touch must be of the same type -- open to open, wall to wall. Scoring happens 3 times during the game. You get points by owning the majority of a building type. You also get a point for each exterior wall segment for your longest running section of wall.
George started out in the lead. He was collecting Towers, the most valuable building type in the game. He was able to maintain his majority throughout the game but he was constantly battling Dan for the majority so neither of them were able to establish a majority (or 2nd or 3rd) in another building type. This led to the other 3 players taking over the lead in the middle of the game. In the end, Jim had the highest score followed by Dave and Jeff.
Boomtown
GeorgeP, JeffL and Troy left around 10pm. The rest of the group (DanD, DaveF, Kieron, JimG and Jim's wife Jill) finished with Boomtown, a Gold Rush themed auction game with an interesting twist of the auction winner paying the player on his right instead of the bank. That player takes half rounded up and passes the rest to his right, repeating until you reach the player to the left of the winner. The auction winner takes his choice of card. The player on his left chooses second, etc. with the player to the right of the auction winner choosing last.
DaveF won Boomtown with a strong finish. Kieron and JimG were 2nd and 3rd, trailing by about 10-15 points.
Preview of Das Zepter von Zavandor
DanD and DaveF hung around for a little while after Kieron left and JimG walked through the basics of Das Zepter von Zavandor. It's a fantasy themed game that is said to be derived from the ))TimJim(( game called Outpost. Similarities have been drawn to Puerto Rico and Power Grid. Similar to PR because you spend the early and middle part of the game building an economic engine by upgrading your magic gems, increasing your knowledge of magic and purchasing (via auctions) magic artifacts. You spend the last part of the game converting the output of that engine into as many victory points as possible. It has similarities to Power Grid in that turn order for a round is based on who was leading at the end of the previous round. Although this game will run on the long side, it looks to be very enjoyable in terms of theme and depth of play.
