September Game-A-Day Challenge: Week Three

Into our third week and still going strong(-ish)




Day 15 - Friday, 15 September 2017 - Lords of Waterdeep



Having a bit more time on Friday afternoon (after finally submitting our Education Plans for the year!) we broke out Lords of Waterdeep! The Girl scooped the Harpers (which I usually play) so I ended up with the Red Sashes. My Lord was actually a Lady - and so was The Girl's - if only Finnegan's had been one then we could have been playing LADIES of Waterdeep! The Girl did a 25 point quest early on and kept her well ahead of the rest of us for most of the game. For the longest time I was fighting Finnegan for second place... then on the second last turn Finnegan played an intrigue card that allowed him to draw quest cards equal to the number of players, take one and pass them around for the rest of us to take one. Among those was a card that was worth FOURTY POINTS - and I just happened to have ALL of the requirements sitting in my tavern (or maybe I needed on or two things, but they were easy to pick up that very turn!). That suddenly put me into a commanding lead that neither of the kids could hope to catch up. 

I also ended up succeeding at TEN Piety and Arcana quests - each of which got me an additional 4 points, so... The Lieutenant I picked up in the first turn to two and having that one extra agent is a HUGE advantage! I had pointed it out and discussed it so no one would be shocked if I got it and cleaned their clocks with it. I wasn't even the first to go -and it wasn't even the first quest I picked up, so I didn't really fell all that bad about taking it and having that extra agent.

Day 16 - Saturday, 16 September 2017 - Race for the Galaxy

Originally I'd actually set up Agricola to play, but then Amanda and The Girl got back from running some errands over an HOUR later than I'd expected them, so we didn't end up having time to play... I'd left it out and hoping we'd get to play it on Sunday. As Amanda and I were heading out to a show at the Persephone Theatre Saturday evening, we needed to play a quicker game - so I busted out Race for the Galaxy - which we haven't played for a while (though according to BGG I've now played it 45 times!). For start worlds I'd had the Uplift Mercenary Force and Old Earth, but I had two Alien cards in my had - one of them being a 6-cost development that gave piles of points for Alien things, so I decided to go alien... and then Amanda played the Alien Research Team start world and is seemed we would BOTH be vying for alien things... I was a little worried I was going to do poorly as all the worlds and developments I was putting out were only 1-2 points each and I wasn't racking up the victory points from producing and consuming and I wasn't raking in even MORE victory points from prestige like Amanda and Finnegan were... 

More than winning, what I really like doing in the game is having a pretty solid THEM to my tableau, and I was pretty happy with the mostly ALIEN them - with a bit of terraforming on the side. IN the end the pair of six-cost variable victory point developments did okay for me and I ended up with 57 points... Finnegan had 63 (I think - damn I hate prestige...), Keira had 40-sonething and Amanda said she was in the high thirties...? 

I don't think she could have counted right - with those few big point cards and all the prestige she had...?

Day 17 - Sunday, 17 September 2017 - Agricola

We DID get to play Agricola on Sunday after all...  We didn't quite get done before the kids had to head out to Irish Dance - but we left it set up and finished it off after they got back. 

The game went as most of our games of Agricola go - Amanda carries on about how she is "Floundering" and "has no idea what [she's] doing" and how she's "going to do very poorly"... and then by about round five she's completely dominating the game. By round ten she had a six room stone house (yeah, SIX!) and five family members (and complained that it was stupid that the game didn't allow you to have MORE family members!?). Due to varied occupations she collects two food EVERY round and a clay (one of which, with an other occupation, can be turned into two food at harvest time), and she can convert as many stone as she likes into two food (per stone)... Oh and gets an additional wood every time she collects wood.... The rest of us had yet to build a third room in our pathetic little wood shanties. At the beginning of round twelve she's developed nothing else on her land (other than the sprawling mansion - I joked about her being a hobby farmer that lived on a sprawling average and just worked in the city). With five workers over the last three turns she filled that up pretty quick! 

This was my sad little farm at the end of the game... Never even got to expanding the house or family... But it DID get SEVEN fields ploughed - which is too many really - you don't get points for any beyond five (other than you're not LOSING points for not having the area developed. One thing I don't like about the game is it's so hard to get fields ploughed. I was DETERMINED this game to get more fields ploughed. 

I started the game with a couple occupations and improvements that I thought would work out for me - something involving going straight from wood to stone and a quarry that gave me 3 stone when I did day labour and... something else... I can't remember... but I just couldn't get them out. Part of the problem was I misread the card that allows Major improvements - I'd thought it said build major and/or minor improvement (as so many of the action cards do) - around the second or third round I had it ALL planned out and then when I went on that action card and realized I couldn't do BOTH it kind of screwed my whole plan and I was scrambling to refigure everything so I had food for everyone by harvest - had to make some less than optimal moves with put me further behind... ugh... 

Amanda admiring her end game farm. 

I have to admit, it was a pretty amazing farm...

And she totally destroyed us. Yeah - she had more points than then next two highest scoring players combined!? Clearly the way to go is to get lots of jobs in the city to support your farming hobby and build a big-ass mansion and family and THEN develop the rest of the farm! 

Ah well... fun was had. 

I'm not fond of the four player game - I recall the five player has WAY BETTER action cards - there are so many more options available.


Day 18 - Monday, 18 September 2017 - Love Letter

This week got a little busy again. We ended up playing a quick game of Love Letter in the evening after the kids got back from swimming lessons, just before we all went to bed. 

I swear I get this had EVERY SINGLE GAME.... 

Day 19 - Tuesday, 19 September 2017 - Monarch

I spent a good chunk of the day wrecking more of our kitchen and dining room... So I didn't feel bad taking a break and playing a not-totally-quick game... 

We played quick-ish game of Monarch while I was making supper. In Monarch we play at princesses building up the bestest court. Finnegan snapped up the scimitar before I could wrecking my plan to fly the Might Banner again, but I ended up getting the GET WISDOM CHEAP card (whatever it is called) and ended with a court full of wisdom cards.

This game I kind of just collected money and didn't bother buying cards - the than a few upgrades to the lands - to make MORE money and waited for an opportunity to pick up one of the BUY STUFF CHEAPER cards - and then blow all that money as fast as possible buying up cards of that type... worked out pretty good...

In the end Finnegan flew the Banner of Might and The Girl flew the banner of Culture... Fun was had...


Day 20 - Wednesday, 20 September 2017 - For Sale



There always ends up being a day where we don't get to playing a game earlier in the days and have to quickly get one in just before bed... and we end up playing For Sale...


Day 21 - Thursday, 21 September 2017 - Samarkand: Route to Riches

More wrecking of the old kitchen today - almost done with the demolition. Next week I have some preparing for ToonCon to do and then beginning the first week of October we start putting the kitchen back together.



I finished up early enough we had almost two hours to play a game so we got out Samarkand: Route to Riches. We've played this about 7 times now and are getting pretty quick at it. I think it took us over and hour - but it FLEW by. 

Finnegan ended the game by making an alliance (or trade agreement) with the Persians - the only group that hadn't yet made one (and I think it used up the last trade agreement token of the Levants...? which also ends the game). 

I managed to marry into five families (collecting up 5 wives in the process) - The Girl also managed to marry into five families (collecting five husbands in the process - although at first she considered collecting wives - or BFFs as she called them, "because they looked prettier"...). 

It was a pretty tight race. The Girl and I both had final scores in the 80s and Finnegan wasn't far behind with 70... He only had four wives, so...

The last few times I've played with four or five players and you only get a maximum of 7 or so cards. Playing with three was fun as you could have up to TEN cards - which made for a lot more possibilities.

Day 22 - Friday, 22 September 2017 - Warhammer 40,000 (8th Edition)

Technically this is getting into week four, but whatever... This evening we had our first go at 8th Edition 40K. I'd set the table earlier in the afternoon thinking we'd play with Finnegan's Orks and my Guaiacan Commandoes (the Astra Militarum's lesser known jungle fighters...). But then we decided it's probably work better if I just ran the game and the kids played and The Girl wanted to play with her Eldar. Unfortunately we got started later that I'd hoped and then it took us a little longer to get set up and going that I'd anticipated and we ran out of time. We'd only gotten through the first half of the second turn... Can't really say much about it... we knew going in it was a pretty miss-matched scenario. We did leave it set up and might finish it off on Saturday after The Girl gets back from dance classes...

What's Next...?

Well, hopefully we WILL get to finish the game of 40K and I'll get to post a brief after action report. 

After that I'll probably have a few jet bikes to post as I finish them off over the next couple days. I have some terrain I'm going to fix up and a few more things I need to do to prepare for ToonCon - which is ONE WEEK FROM NOW! 

I'll probably post post on Friday about the games we've played between Saturday and Thursday, and then on Sunday I'll hammer out a report of what went down at ToonCon! 

Stay tuned!