Board Games with Dave

I flew to Las Vegas to join Chris and Jarred at David and Nicole’s for a weekend of board gaming. We started from the moment we got to Dave’s house, and played through the weekend. We got in a lot of games…

Saturday we started with Blind Justice, where you play trial lawyers in the 80s. It’s a solid game; Jarred continued his winning streak, making it to the end while we were still struggling in district court.

We also played a few games of Guillotine, which was good silly fun. Many heads were collected…

One of the most fun games of the weekend was Big Idea where you play Venture Capitalists, looking to get in on the next big thing. Making the products and pitching them was lots of fun. For our group, it was clear that much like the internet, porn leads the way. Sexy products did much better than practical ones… my most popular item was the Beer Magnet. Chris did well promoting a “vibrating cat”. Jarred snuck out a narrow victory in the end.

We played La Citta, one of Dave’s favorite games, and one I really enjoy. The board was horrible to us– the lakes all clumped at one end, so our cities all packed tight. It was very interesting.

We then wandered into Settlers of Canann, which is a cool Settlers variant. Jarred leapt out to an early lead and was in a position to surge to victory when everyone else was ayt 8 or fewer points, but Dave noticed the possibility of an easy Stones to Jerusalem for victory and took the option away. We went for quite a while after that; Jarred locked down longest road, but it took him quite a while to make it across the finish. Finally he got enough cards to do a huge Stones of Jerusalem rush and won… just before I would have done the same. (I was in the next seat.)

Chris rejoined us and we decided to finish the day with a game of Burn Rate. The good cards came up first, giving us a cushion… then came a slew of Bad Ideas, Poaches, and Bad Hires that started crushing us. I built up Chris’s HR and Finance departments with Bad Hires, to which he responded by poaching away my HR and Finance. Then the bad ideas came flying in and I was quickly bankrupt. Everyone else followed in a turn or two, leaving Jarred as the victor.

Sunday morning started with a few games of Cube Farm. I snuck out the first game (with a devestating VP placement), but Chris did brilliantly the second game with one placement that garnered about 15 points.

We followed up with Alhambra, which Nicole had been looking forward to. Jarred cornered Towers and got into a 3 way tie for first in Gardens, leading to his victory… one of the narrowest I’ve ever seen in Alhambra.

Quo Vadis was next game on our list. Jarred dominated the Chamber of 5 on the left hand side, while Chris dominated the lower chamber of 3 on the right. They worked together to pipeline their Senators through the left side, while I couldn’t gather a quorum in either chamber branching from the right. It was very interesting– I liked it and suspect that there’s a lot of interesting stuff that’ll come up if we play again. Unfortunately, Nicole was less impressed. Jarred took this one handily.

Running short on time, we tried out Time’s Up and had a very well matched game. There was a lot of laughter and snorting as it played out. Chris and I opposed David and Jarred. There were a lot of hard names– though exactly who was hard varied, depending on your background. The three rounds were 16/16, 15/17, 15/17, with David and Jarred mining their extensive experience for a win. (That, or that really was Jarred’s lucky day.)

We finished up with Carcassonne – Hunters and Gatherers, and had a lot of fun. Chris dominated an extensive field on the left, while Jarred and I wound up sharing a good sized field on the right. 4 out of 5 of us got into the primary lake system, which was enough points to eliminate the lead Jarred had accumulated in other fields. I got to leave on a high note, with a narrow victory.

It was an amazingly fun weekend– I’m already looking forward to the next one.