On Saturday I usually play Savage Worlds in the evening, but not so yesterday I attended the inaugural FreezerBurn - John Burt's invitational Board Gaming Day. There were Eleven participants and we played six games. Each game participants got points based on their placement within the group they were playing with and at the end of the day the Participant with the highest point total got to choose first from the prize table (everyone also had to bring one board game to put up as a prize - so everyone got to go home with a new game!).
Game One
Small World
Stumbled into John's house just as SMall world was starting. This turned out to be teh only game of the day I'd actually played before... and I'd only played it once before... over a year ago... Above is the table I played at with (left to right) Leah, Jason, and Dan. I eeked out a victory over Jason by ONE POINT!?
I like Small World. I'll probably break down and buy it some day.... Maybe after I get around to playing some of the board games I already have!!
Game Two
Railways of the World
Played with (left to right) Darrin, John (the Host), Aaron, and Leah. This was the first "Train Game" I've ever played. It was fun enough. I think I was dead last....? Leah and I were kind of competing in the region of Chicago. The others were more or less on the other side of the Mountains, and Aaron built track through the area to complete a main line, but didn't really interfere.
Game Three
Dominion
I played this with Darrin, John and Brenda. Fun. Fast. So fast I completely forgot to take a picture of the game - so here's John clearing it up!
Game Four
Brass
Played with (left to right) Darrin and Jason. Not only had I not played it, but Darrin and Jason had only ever played it once and there was much confusion... This time it was Jason's turn to beat me by ONE POINT!?
Game Five
Ticket To Ride
Another fast playing game - which I forgot to take a picture of!? There was only two table of this one and I played with John, Darrin, Aaron, and Jason. Wow... I'm not sure how many people this game is usually played with, but with five there was an awful lot of cutting each other off. The initial tickets I was given were horrid - not ONE of them used any of the same track - I picked the two biggest and the shortest one. The shortest was the only one I wasn't able to complete the others Vancouver to Montreal and Calgary to Phoenix I managed to do (though Calgary-Phoenix was by a rather circuitous route) I thought I'd done rather well for myself - until everyone else tallied up their points and I was left in the dust! OI! Fun just the same.
Game Six
Power Grid
(left to right) Brenda, Dave and Kimber. This was a fun game too, but I wasn't really clear on the objective of teh game and was given some not-so-great advise from the other players on where to start that kind of killed me... ("yeah set up in the corner there - you'll be totally close to that one so you can quickly expand into the next city and can take over this whole area without anyone coming near you because it will be too expensive to get through this bottleneck..." - turn three Brenda came through the bottle neck and took three cities pinning me in a corner for a couple turns with only five cities until phase two where I could expand into cities covered by others... ah well...).
I ended up in the middle and came home with a brand new copy of Munchkin Cthulhu (plus three expansions!!)
Somehow I never got to end up at a table with Al!? (maybe next year Al!?)
Anyway it was a totally fun day with some totally fun people! Big thanks to John for organizing it - I hope I get invited again next year!!
Some comments on the games and the selection:
ReplyDeleteI tried to balance a "difficult" game with a "lighter" one.
Small World, Dominion and Ticket to Ride were the "light" games by the way...
I was one of the few people there that had played all the games more than once.
We played some of my favourite games, although Railways of the World was not on my intial list, I am glad we got to play it. It is one of my favourite games, and I am always willing to play it.
My plan next year is to probably change at least one game out of the mix, I am not sure which yet, although I will probably use at least one expansion for Small World (more races and powers), Dominion (probably Seaside), Railways of the World (different map) and Power Grid (different map).
I will have a blog entry up this week for FreezerBurn as well, so I will expand on it further.
Wow - I thought it might be all new games next year!? I didn't mind at all not knowing how to play any of them (I just hope everyone else wasn't annoyed having to explain things to me all the time... They didn't seem to be... but maybe they were just being polite!) - I rather liked it because I got to try out five new games in one day, a couple of which I'd definitely like to play again and might even consider picking up my own copy!
ReplyDeleteThanks once again!
Looks like it was a good time! Your new basement seems ideal for this sort of thing, John.
ReplyDeleteSome other comments:
ReplyDeleteTicket to Ride is for 2-5 players, the 5 player game is particularly difficult because there is so much cutting off. When you play 2-3 you lose the double tracks as well. This makes it an even tougher game. If Leah would have been playing (she is still suffering from whiplash) we would have played with 2 4 player tables and 1 3 player.
In Railways of the World you helped me quite a bit by completely locking up Chicago. If someone (Darrin) would have completed the track from New York to Chicago he would have been even closer to beating me and probably would have. He would have had multiple 8 link deliveries from New York to Chicago as there were red cubes in both cities.
Brass is by the same guy that designed Railways of the World and is a harsh economic game. Railways is a friendlier game, while Brass is very much a gamers game.
We actually played Dominion twice, once so the new players could learn the game, once so you could play for real. It is a light filler that has been hugely expanded.
I lost Power Grid, Aaron beat Leah by 5 bucks, but I love playing it.
Christian, my place is great for this sort of thing, you can't see the fireplace by the last picture, but there is one just behind Kimber. It is also one of the considerations we had when we purchased a place, I wanted a big open basement.
One of the thoughts behind FreezerBurn is that I want to play games that I like, plus games that are possibly going to be at ToonCon. The more people that are playing these games, the more people that are comfortable at ToonCon explaining games.