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GCL Amoeba 18 -- Ever Since Mitosis I Haven't Had Any Free Time
Jerry Hagen
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
age agree eek egg erg gag gage game gamer gee geek gem germ keg kegger mag mage meek mega merge reek rem
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GameChat League - Amoeba Division 18
ABOUT | AMOEBA DIVISION | SUBSCRIBE
Welcome to this week's Amoeba discussion list. Format as per usual. Non-trolling comments from non-members are welcome and encouraged. Have fun!
Current member list:
BrenoK
cadavaca
doubtofbuddha
fattylumpkin
fizzle
ibn_ul_khattab
Iceberg1
jdludlow
jhagen1908
Morganza (next up!)
Thies
verandi
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Jerry Hagen
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
age agree eek egg erg gag gage game gamer gee geek gem germ keg kegger mag mage meek mega merge reek rem
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This is the Brag About Your Kids thread. Or if you have no kids, brag about your pets. Or if you have no pets, brag about your game collection.
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Jerry Hagen
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
age agree eek egg erg gag gage game gamer gee geek gem germ keg kegger mag mage meek mega merge reek rem
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What's happening in Real Life keeping you from posting and gaming as much as you might otherwise?
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Jerry Hagen
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
age agree eek egg erg gag gage game gamer gee geek gem germ keg kegger mag mage meek mega merge reek rem
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Post here if you promised a comparative review of Clash of Cultures with a couple other civ games last week, but only delivered on the first part and would like to continue the conversation. Umm, not that that applies to anyone I know.
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5.
Board Game: Go
[Average Rating:7.78 Overall Rank:43]
James Ludlow
United States
Saint Louis Park
Minnesota
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Recap of last week
7x A Game of Thrones: The Card Game
6x Go
1x The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
I logged my 600th play of Go with a 0.5 point win over the guy who taught me the game. He was 2-1 for the day against me. We were able to review a couple of key concepts, so I think I learned some things from yesterday's games.
In LotR LCG news, I finally beat the Journey Down the Anduin quest solo. The third quest is brutal against a single player, and I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle it yet. It will probably require a larger card pool.
On Friday our fitness class did the "Murph" (a.k.a. "Body Armor") in honor of Lt. Michael Murphy. He was a hero in Afghanistan and had a warship named after him this weekend.
His workout is as follows:
- 1 mile run
- 100 pull up
- 200 push up
- 300 squat
- 1 mile run
Lt. Murphy would do this workout in body armor, which is where the nickname came from.
I only did a 1/2 Murph (cut all the numbers in half). Most did a full, and a couple of crazed individuals wore a 20# weight vest to simulate the armor.
Knowing that Lt. Murphy did this workout as no big thing gives me a tiny glimpse into the drive he must have had. To him it was wasn't this epic challenge to overcome. It was Tuesday and he needed to sweat a bit.
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Breno K.
Brazil
Brasília
Distrito Federal
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2x CoH: AtB
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John Brier
United States
Aventura
Florida
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2x Dominant Species
2x Notre Dame
2x UR
1x 7 Wonders
1x Cargo Noir
1x Goa
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Jesse Dean
United States
Orlando
Florida
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious predator on Earth!
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Merchants of Venus x1
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game x1
Merchants of Venus was another instance of me getting very lucky, very early and running away with it. I am sure me knowing what I was doing had somehting to do with it, but my luckiness is undeniable.
I though Lord of the Rings: TCG was adequate, but playing it reaffirmed that I have no interested in playing it over most other two-player card games. I would much rather play Yomi, Puzzle Strike, Race For the Galaxy, or Innovation. I would nod mind playing it again, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so and found that it largely lacked tension or anything particularly interesting going on once you get a hang of the system.
I think my problem with it may simply be be a reflection of my problem with cooperative games in general, any "system" developed for a board game has to be simple enough that by its nature it will lack the depth you can get out of a good strategic computer game thus, when push comes to shove, I will almost always end up choosing to play a good computer game over a cooperative board game.
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Jerry Hagen
United States
Madison
Wisconsin
age agree eek egg erg gag gage game gamer gee geek gem germ keg kegger mag mage meek mega merge reek rem
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Stone Age 1
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization 1
Play count was low, play quality was high.
I arrived to Friday night gaming just in time to fill in the fourth seat in Through the Ages. I started with Moses and no Age A wonder - Moses is my third choice behind Caesar and Aristotle, both of whom were gone by my turn as I was in fourth position. I declined Colossus and Library of Alexandria in the hopes of getting an early Universitas Carolina, which is exactly what happened. My population was thus freed to pump out a couple Medieval Armies.
I snagged Columbus for a single civil action early on in Age I, and after a successful bid for a Fertile Territory decided to draft James Cook. However I never drew a colony the whole game, and even cost myself some Cook points chasing the Columbus freebie. So even though I did eventually get Cook down with two colonies in play, I felt I had to seed Iconoclasm as Napoleon would eventually be heading my way. Fortunately Michelangelo had built one player an early culture lead so I had a little breathing space before I would be targeted, and Iconoclasm occurred early in Age III, on my turn so I could pluck Einstein for three actions. When Computers came up on my next turn and I got a cheap Air Forces on the turn after that (three came up in quick succession) I found myself in a very powerful position, as my population lead meant I could put more people into military than the other players. I wrecked Michelangelo with an "unsuccessful" War on Culture in which he sacrificed all his Legions to gain 4 points on me, followed by a Holy War. Then on the last turn I Plundered him and gained enough resources to finish the First Space Flight.
I would have won by eight points without the Space Flight but it became a comfortable win with the wonder finished. Win or lose, it was a tense and satisfying session that wrapped up in less than 5 hours, pretty good for a four-player game.
My parents came to town on Saturday and during nap time we taught them Stone Age. My mom picked up on it pretty quickly (as she tends to do) and came within 10 points of finishing in one of the top two positions. My parents both liked the game and requested we bring it when we visit them over Memorial Day weekend - success!
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10.
Board Game: Macao
[Average Rating:7.48 Overall Rank:132]
Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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Games Played
Mon 2nd to Sunday 8th
Macao 5
Ghost Stories3
A Castle for All Seasons 1
Twilight Struggle 1
a somewhat unrepresentative list this week, primarily driven by double checking how we felt about some games. Macao we enjoyed enough to leave set up for a few days and play as our evening game, its a nice light to middleweight euro with lots of replayability due to the cards and the way the dice can be used to reserve action cubes, but ultimately its the kind of game I am leaning away from now as just a bit too "meh". Thats unkind, as we have had a great time playing this one and gotten our moneys worth out of it, but theres just not enough interesting game there to keep me wanting it to be part of our routine gaming, not when there are really great games that are more deserving of our time.
Ghost Stories I can see why its popular, its a great design, wonderful theme and looks, and works really well but I just cant get into co op games any more, its not so much the alpha leader syndrome, more that too many options seem either obvious or otherwise just "do whatever and see". Too much like a puzzle, somehow its just not something I can see us wanting to play
Castle, well, its just another in a long line of resouce collecting to VP worker placement (though its more role selection), beautiful components, but definitely not best or even great with 2, and so I will let it go. I'm coming more and more into line with thinking Agricola, Le Havre and Caylus have so thoroughly covered our need for this kind of game, there really is little point for us in having this raft of games trying to do bits of those greats, especially when they rarely work with 2 players. Will probably keep Carson City for its theme, and the duelling aspect and geometric aspect, but Castle, like Pillars of the Earth and World Without End just seem kind of superfluous now
Twilight Struggle was an online play with BGG user Haring who schooled me in how to play the USA, winning in the mid war and giving me an overview of vassal play, and some very interesting commentary on the gameplay of TS (though I dont want to learn too much from others, am more interested in learning myself through more F2F play with the missus). Definitely thinking about investing in a cheap 2nd LCD for the PC for Vassal, the UI definitely feels cramped in a way that detracts from the experience. And since I also plan on playing some CC and FF there (I doubt the missus will want to play F2F quite as much as me!), I think it will be worthwhile getting some extra screen real estate
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Jevon Heath
United States
Berkeley
California
What the hell is doing is being used out of clefts by me.
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3x Glory to Rome
2x Ca$h 'n Gun$
1x Battlestar Galactica (with both expansions)
1x Kansas Pacific
1x Junta (called early)
1x Mü
1x Race for the Galaxy (with Gathering Storm - no goals)
This week was pretty unsatisfying gamingwise. Wednesday evening saw a good four-player game of Race for the Galaxy, and Friday evening I played my first two two-player games of Glory to Rome; every other game played this week was a learning game, either for me or for everyone else.
I hadn't played Kansas Pacific for a year and a half, and I was it teaching it to three Winsome neophytes. As such, we were playing from square one. As you might expect, the game tilted immediately and irrecoverably toward one player. We played about two rounds more until we reached a consensus that it was over.
Battlestar Galactica I was greatly looking forward to playing again, but I did not expect the expansions. I was in over my head, I had no idea what to do. Nobody explained why there was a blatant Cylon chilling in the Communications room for most of the game, or what he could do.
In both Battlestar and Race for the Galaxy this week I felt the expansions were an unnecessary if not deleterious addition to the game. I like expansions in general, really I do. But I prefer to get what I can out of the game as it is before adding ninety bells and six hundred thirty whistles to it. I still haven't played Expansion #1 for Gulf, Mobile & Ohio despite it being for my favorite game. Unfortunately it seems people (around here?) are generally eager to add new stuff and unwilling to take it back out.
Junta was good but for one or two personalities at the table. I'd like to try a complete game at some point in the future with people who want to play Junta specifically, not just whatever game is being played.
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Thies Kolln
United States
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
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Good quality, not much quantity this week:
1x Innovation (with Echoes of the Past)
1x Race for the Galaxy (with GS and RvI and goals)
1x Twilight Struggle
1x Yomi
Bascially three games with Joel on Monday as we were the only two who could make the weekly game night (again) and one Race for the Galaxy with my wife over the weekend.
The only game really worth extended comment this week was Twilight Struggle. I got to play the USSR for the first time in a while -- my recent games had all been teaching games in which I took the US. Unfortunately this game wasn't played at a particularly high level. Both Joel and I made some big mistakes in the first two rounds. I got myself straigtened out after that and ran the big red steamroller pretty well through the next few rounds and took the win in round 7 (or maybe 6?) when I called a Summit while dominating on four continents (Europe, Asia, ME and Africa). Joel was additionally hurt by drawing all but one of the scoring cards, which really limited his ops.
It was definitely good to play this again, but also frustrating because I often go so long between plays that I'm really re-learning old lessons each time I play rather than improving my play and better learning the game. The only solution is more plays in a shorter amount of time, but that is the problem with many other of my favorites.
I can hardly wait for the non-home-made version of the Innovation expansion to arrive. It is such a great addition to an already great game.
Yomi I found clever and fun, but feel no great desire to own it at this point. I was never into the video game equivalents enough for this to really grab me, although I'll happily play it again when there are 15 minutes to kill.
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Jens Granseuer
Germany
Frankfurt am Main
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Games played
1x 1870
1x Airships
1x Alien Frontiers
1x Clippers
1x Commands & Colors: Ancients
1x Container
1x Pickomino
1x Rage
1x Tigris & Euphrates
1x Torres
1x Vasco da Gama
This week was odd. I won all the dice games. By Saturday everything was back to normal.
I really like how a game of Container can feel so very different depending on how the players distribute their money. Nevertheless it also shows groupthink at work. I don't think I've ever seen a game with scores above 200, and some people are even reporting 300 and more. This one was fairly cash-strapped because grabbing your own shipments to the island wasn't uncommon, and as a result we barely limped across the 100. Two of the colours were produced in very small numbers only. I only ran my factory once, and that was to end the game so that the rest of the table didn't get a chance to get a fifth colour onto the island.
Commands & Colors was a close 5:4 for the Syracusans at Crimissos River that likely could have ended 4:5 if we had had another turn. I've only played the first two scenarios so far, and I'd say they are slightly biased towards the Romans. Is that so?
The play of Torres was the first time I've played without the default castle setup (I think). And what a change that is. We only ever had three castles larger than 2 pieces. Here it was the master assignment that won the game, as one player had a great position to go for it with hardly sacrificing any points, and the other two didn't.
Tigris & Euphrates - one of those classics on the need-to-play list. The first play was... inconclusive. It's very obviously a Knizia game, fairly abstract, yet still with a very sensible theme binding, and quirky scoring. It looks very good on paper to me but for some reason (possibly because we were all new to the game and pretty much just flaundered about for at least half of the game) that didn't translate to a great game for me. I'd like to try again, though.
Alien Frontiers was similar in that it did seem like a nice enough dice management game after the rules explanation but fell flat during play. I still think it could be salvaged with a few changes but as it is it has too many issues: only one way to score points, horrendous downtimes, and the great equalizer, leader bashing.
In 1870 I had a cash advantage pretty much from the get-go, but somehow couldn't turn that into anything useful. I had my portfolio maxed out first, with more cash on hand, yet at the end my stocks weren't up there with the rest. I'm still scratching my head and wondering what went wrong.
I almost, almost, almost got to play Die Macher on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were not able to round up more than 3 interested players. Damn sceptics! I may have to get my own copy in order to be able to force it on people more easily.
Clippers was a nail-biter even though the British had three trading posts on New Guinea with three shipping lines connecting to it. He won by 3 measly points, and the first four players were all within 10 points. This is my fifth logged play of Clippers. Every time, the nations have been distributed randomly. 4 out of those 5 times I ended up with France. What does that mean?
Vasco da Game was nice. It's basically YAWPG (Yet Another Worker Placement Game) but there is a novel timing aspect to placing your workers that makes it worthwhile. Instead of simply placing your action pawns and then executing the action you place them together with a time marker. This marker determines when in the turn resolution step this pawn will be activated. In order to prevent players from simply always taking the earliest available slot you will have to pay money to execute early actions. However, at the beginning of the turn it is only roughly known where that cut-off point will be so you can grab an early spot and hope it won't cost you too much or play it safe and take a spot that will execute later, but at no cost. Theme integration is a little weak, I'll admit, but it's definitely no "throw-from-the-roof" material.
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James Ludlow
United States
Saint Louis Park
Minnesota
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What game(s) do you want to acquire that you suspect you will never play?
I know, we're all trying to trim our collections and we research each game for 6 months to ensure a proper purchase. It's still a hobby, and we're all blowing discretionary cash on these cardboard boxes.
Kings & Things keeps working its way up my wishlist. My desire to buy it is inverse to my hope that I'll ever play it. It's completely stupid for me to buy it, but my resolve is fading.
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Joel J
United States
Iowa City
IA
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1x Twilight Struggle
1x Innovation with Innovation: Echoes of the Past
1x Yomi
Just these few with Thies this week. I embarrassed myself in yet another game of Twilight Struggle by completely forgetting important cards in the deck.
Innovation - Echoes of the Past is just great. It improves upon almost every aspect of the game.
Yomi - I'm clearly not playing Jaina very well. Grave and his 45point super hit are doing me in all too often.
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