SOG session. 5-player For Sale, 4-player New England, 6-player Sticheln, 6-player 6 Nimmt.
Players were Chris, Josh, Sara, Don, myself. New players to the game were Sara, Don, myself.
This is a bidding card game with a realty theme.
Players start with twenty chips. Cards containing property are flipped. Each card has a value. The first player makes a starting bid. Each player then matches the bid, raises the bid, or drops out. When a player drops out, he gets the property at half his current bid.
After all the cards are played, a second deck with money values is dealt. All players secretly make a bid using their property cards and reveal them simultaneously. Highest property value gets the highest money value, and so on. This gets repeated until all the property is spent.
The winner is the player with the most money.
What can I say? This is a light card game that we played before getting to the meatier games.
Final scores were:
Click here to buy For Sale at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about For Sale at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Lewis, Chris, Eric, myself. New players to the game were: Lewis, Chris, Eric, myself. Eric had the first turn.
New England is a resource-management tile-laying game with a historical New England theme.
Players choose a family name and place the rectangular tiles representing their three types of land on the game grid.
Then players take turns placing nine land tiles and development cards (at least three of each) for sale. Then players choose a bidding token which represents turn order (highest to lowest) and cost of tiles and cards.
Then, in turn order, players buy 0, 1 or 2 tiles and cards, and play them immediately. Land tiles are placed, undeveloped side up, next to the player's tiles of the same time. Development cards are worth points if the given pattern can be developed; they also contain pilgrims worth extra income, ships which let the player flip an additional tile or card, and barns which let the player store a development card for later.
When there are no more tiles or cards to draw, the game ends and cards are scored.
Well, we were all clueless playing the game for the first time. I took the strategy of collecting money early, and buying land tiles cheaply. Lewis took advantage of whatever looked good at the time. Chris and Eric tried to balance purchases between everything.
In the end, I was winning, except that Lewis pulled a development card from storage to score ten points, shooting past my score.
This is a simple game to learn, with a little bit of thinking -- a light strategy game. I'd play it again.
Caption: Close to finishing the game of New England, Lewis will pounce.
Final scores were:
Click here to buy New England at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about New England at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Chris, Mark, Josh, Eric, Lewis, myself. New players to the game were: Chris, Mark, Eric, Lewis, myself.
This is a trick-taking card game.
There are six suits numbered 0 through 14. Each player is dealt a hand of cards. All players simultaneously choose a card to be their "pain-card." The color of this card is bad -- players normally score one point for each trick taken, but subtracts the value of each card in the color of the pain-card from the score.
Highest score wins after five hands.
I'm usually not big on card games and this is no exception. It's novel to avoid the pain-card and screw other players when the opportunity comes up. Josh thinks this game is tricky with skilled players.
We played only two rounds. My second hand was nearly two-thirds red. The usual strategy is to make something you have four or five of as the pain-card, but I went with red. It turned out I was able to get rid of all my reds and not acquire any. I figured if I had all the reds and people play their reds, I could easily avoid getting burned taking red cards.
The second hand, many people played their zero cards as their pain cards with the hopes of avoiding subtracting the pain card from their score. That was silly, because it would be useful to have during the round to avoid picking up an unwanted hand.
I'd play this again, but it's not engaging.
Final scores were:
Click here to buy Sticheln at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about Sticheln at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Chris, Mark, Josh, Eric, Lewis, myself.
This is a card game.
Each player is dealt a hand of cards. Each card has a number and a point value.
Four cards are dealt on to the table. These are the start of four rows.
Each player selects a card simultaneously, and reveals it. In numerical order, the cards are placed next to the row in which it's higher than the highest value but lower than all the other rows. If the card is too low to be added to any row, the player takes a row of his choice and places his card in its place. If the card is the sixth card of the row, he takes the row and puts his card in its place.
When all the cards are played, the acquired cards are scored by adding the point values.
The game ends when a player reaches 66 points. A new hand is shuffled until the game ends.
The lowest score wins.
This game had a classic Chris-Vitas moment. At one point, there was a row of four cards with a 102 in it, so I selected my secret card with a 103 on it saying "This is the only chance to play this card."
"Oh, you have the 104," says Josh, "Wouldn't it suck if someone played the 103?" (104 is the highest card in the game.)
Chris obviously didn't pay attention to the exchange and played the 104, which won him that row of cards, after which I laughed heartily.
Final scores were:
Click here to buy 6 Nimmt at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about 6 Nimmt at BoardGameGeek.com.
Click here for .chip's take on the session.
Click here for Chris' take on the session.
