July 21, 2004 |
Scott and Dan showed up about 15 minutes late, and after some talking and so forth we finally started a game of Ivanhoe. Sam arrived about 10 minutes in and we put him in the game, though he was pretty far behind to start. Sam wanted to play Citadels, but Dan and I told him to put it back.
| Ivanhoe |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla | 4 | 1 | |
| Mike | 3 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Scott | 3 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Dan | 2 | 4 | |
| Sam | 0 | 5 | * |
Notes: Ivanhoe is sort of a "Taj Mahal lite." Basically, someone chooses a tournament in one of 5 colors, and everyone chooses whether they wish to compete in the tournament (and play cards) or drop out (and not play cards). The first one to collect the 5 different tourney colors wins. When Sam showed up, we had 5 people, and so the game would end when someone collected 4 different colors.
Scott played pretty well, and everyone picked up on what I call the "Dan strategy." The Dan strategy is to let two or more people expend all their cards on one color, then, when it's your turn to choose a tourney, choose the tourney color that had just exhausted everyone else's cards. This tends to work pretty well, though some people started challenging the "Dan strategists" later in the game.
Scott got off to a nice lead, winning two tourneys quickly, while the rest of us each won 1 apiece. Slowly, Karla and I grabbed our 2nd victories, and Scott won his third, then Sam joined in and won a sword fighting tournament. Then Dan started out-thinking himself, and though he won a second tourney, he soon made a serious misplay.
Karla cleverly changed a tourney color to green, and since I had already won a brawling tourney, I let her have it. Next, Sam tried to defeat me in a jousting tournament, and not only lost the tourney, but lost his red chip because his maiden supporter was on the losing end. Sorry Sam!
Next up, Dan started another purple tourney (the Dan strategy). This is actually illegal. You're not allowed to start a purple tourney just after a purple tourney has ended - most likely to avoid people using the Dan strategy (you can start a tourny of any other color once that tourney is over). Dan grumbled, so I let it fly. To everyone's loss. Karla out-jousted Dan, who must have thought he could pull off the victory easily and didn't foresee any competition. It was Karla's fourth tourny victory (she had already won a brawl, an axe-fight, and a swordfight), and she became the most noteworthy knight of the land.
| Power Grid |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 7 (+12 Electros) | 1 | * |
| Karla | 7 (+5 Electros) | 2 | * |
| Dan | 6 | 3 | * |
| Sam | 5 | 4 (Tie) | * |
| Annie | 5 | 4 (Tie) | * |
| Scott | 4 | 6 | * |
Notes: Annie showed up, and since everyone was clamoring for a new game (or, should I say, Dan and I didn't want to play Citadels), I pulled out Power Grid and we played the short version.
In Power Grid, each player tries to power as many cities as possible when someone has expanded to his or her 7th city. Each player buys power plants in an auction, then buys the resources necessary to run those power plants, then expands to different cities, and then powers them for money. Each power plant is different, requiring either coal, oil, garbage, or uranium (or no resources), and each one powers a different amount of cities. Also, in connecting to cities, certain areas of the map (we played in Germany rather than the U.S.) have different costs. Connection costs are cheaper in Western Germany, for instance, than Eastern Germany. But if too many people start building in Western Germany, connection costs get more expensive, because you're competing for cities.
There is a nice balance. The person who has expanded to the most cities (and therefore is making the most money), has to 1) buy resources last, which makes them more expensive and 2) buy cities last, which means that there is a higher chance that someone has taken the cheaper places. Thus, someone who is further behind can catch up.
Anyway, the rules didn't take too long to explain, and we soon began an auction. Scott ended up with the lone garbage plant (06), Dan had the cheapest coal plant (04), I had the cheapest oil (03), Sam had the hybrid (05), Annie had a coal plant that could power two cities, but cost 3 (07), and Karla had another oil plant (09). Oil, then, ended up costing a lot, and so I bought as much as I could. It got expensive by the time it got to Karla, and Scott, advised by me, only bought one garbage to fuel his plant since he had the only garbage plant.
Next, it got weird, as I had told everyone that the best place to build was in Western Germany. I promptly built there...and everyone ignored me! Karla started in the south, Annie the east, and Scott, Sam, and Dan inexplicably crowded the north. This was the crucial decision of the game.
In the next auction round, I managed to get a uranium plant, and everyone else managed to get some plants. Karla bought a resource-free plant, which made everyone jealous. Annie didn't buy a plant because hers could already fuel 2 cities. In the next city-buying phase, I expanded to 3 cities, taking advantage of the cheap connection charges. Nobody else had more than 2, and already Scott and Sam were cutting each other off. Dan was in a little bit better position because he could expand west (towards me) more easily.
Eventually, I bought a wind-powered plant for the minimum (I believe it was the 22 plant), and Scott, who had trouble understanding how to go first each turn, was kind of slow on catching up (was it because of inhibitory substances?). I saw that the end was coming soon, and I figured to take the win easily, as I was making a ton of cash and no one had as cheap connection charges as I did. Until Dan finally made it into my cheap area, wreaking a bit of havoc. Then, when I had bought an excellent plant that powered 5 cities, I was going to end the game by purchasing a 7th city. But Karla squeezed me out of the cheapest area and got to 7 cities! I was scared for a second that I couldn't get to my seventh, because my connection charges were going to be higher, but I had overlooked a cheaper route, and ended up getting to 7 after all. Both Karla (who had two resource-free plants) and I were able to power all 7 cities, so it came down to money. I had more.
The game was fun, and seemed to flow pretty well. The toughest choices were to decide which power plant you wanted. You have to balance a lot of things:
At different times during the game, different resources are cheaper. At first, oil was expensive, then garbage quickly became cheap, and coal was generally pretty cheap throughout. The resource-free plants kept coming up pretty frequently, and probably went for cheaper than they should have. Scott, for some reason, refused to power all his cities, generally choosing not to power them at all or to power one less than all of them. Generally, the cost of the resources involved would have rendered him a profit anyway, so I'm not sure his strategy was a wise one.