June 7, 2007 Session Report

We had a pretty good week attendance-wise with a total of 8 gamers: Gabe, Eric, Doug H, Paul, Sarah, Neil, Stan (welcome back Stan who hasn't been to the club in awhile) and myself. A total of six different games were played: Hey That's My Fish! (won by Paul), Age of Empires III (won by Eric, see comments in next paragraph). Tichu (the Gabe/Sarah team was successful), Boomtown (Doug claimed first in this one), Beowulf (Doug made in two in a row in winning this one) and finally two quick games of Category 5 (sorry don't have the results to report).

I spent most of the evening playing a longer game, Age of Empires III, which Stan was kind enough to bring and teach to Eric and myself. The game is about exploration/colonization of the New World and roughly designed to track the computer game, which I have never played. The game designer, Glenn Drover, was previously with Eagle Games where he produced several similar boardgames based on computer game counterparts, such as Civilization, Age of Mythology and Railroad Tycoon. During the explanation I glommed on to this one particular piece of advice from Stan about the importance of money, and after 2-3 turns I was earning like 20-30 a turn while Eric and Stan were still in single digits. This let me buy more buildings, but I am not sure in the long run, they were the better buildings. It was really close in the final score, with Eric winning with 112 to 109 for Stan and I brought up the rear at 106. Not sure what made the final difference, but I think I missed some nuances and didn't shift from money to points soon enough. One conclusion I think we all came to after just one play is that there seems to be no sure-fire, clearcut path to victory, which -- along with random draw of different tiles and buildings that makes each game different -- means a high replay value. Only negative about the game was a slight luck factor if you a short on colonist points when attempting a discovery -- Stan and I each got burned on this although I got real lucky in making one early discovery succeed with the minimum number of colonists (one). A bit of a learning curve, but it was an enjoyable game, one that I will probably add to my collection.