The Game Day Repore... I mean report

This entry rated HG13 by the Academy of Gaming Arts and Sciences for its high geek factor. It will not be of interest to everyone. It's also taken me several lunch breaks to write.

I haven’t talked about one of my hobbies in quite a while, that hobby being games. I play PC games, console games, board games, role playing games, and war games. The past sixteen months have been great for the roll playing variety. I’ve written in the past about my adventures in the Call of Cthulhu and D&D RPGs. What I haven’t written about is what I’ve been playing in the board/war game, and console/PC arenas. Well, today, I rectify that and well start with board/wargames.

This past weekend Jenne and I hosted a game day at our place. Not the best attended of the events we have held – only four gamers, other events we’ve had as many as ten - but still many games were played and a very good time was had. Jenne even made us a delicious dinner of her famous Pennsylvania style BBQ! Now that’s good eat’in! Ted and his brother, Paul came over on Saturday and at noon the games commenced until around midnight. Not our longest game day. That ran from noon until 4:00 AM the following Sunday! I’ll talk about each game we played in order.

History of the World
This game is a favorite at game days and is always kept in an easily accessible spot in the closet oh games! Even the ladies enjoy this one and Jenne does very well at it. She’s even won at it against us mighty grognards of yore! HotW works under the assumptions that all empires eventually fade and that the only things differentiating great empires from lesser ones is how large they grow and how long it takes for them to vanish from the face of the earth. To simulate this, the game is played in seven epochs, with every player handling a new empire during each. What is nice about this mechanic is that even if your empire of the current or earlier epoch is wiped off the face of the earth, you’re still in the game. Once you score points for an epoch/empire, you can never loose those points. Some empires are of course stronger than others (Rome has a strength of 25, whereas the Celts have a strength of 8), but a few clever game mechanisms largely balance that out. At the end of each epoch, players score points for all their forces (from the current and previous empires) remaining on the board. This game is fun and challenging and different each time it is played, because no one ever gets the same exact empires due to the random draw. It moves at a nice pace with four players. Get a game going with five or six and though and really slows down. We had a good four player game going and off course there was much bashing of Ted’s empires and mine. The standard house rule is, always bash on Ted. Even so, he still won and I came in last. I was even beat by Jenne!

Shadows Over Camelot
From the rulebook:
In most games, players compete against each other to achieve victory. Shadows over Camelot proposes a journey of a very different kind, where you and your fellow players, as Knights of the Round Table, will collaborate to jointly defeat... the game!
At first glance, this task seems simple enough. After all, shouldn’t a band of young and noble Knights - fleet of foot and sound of mind - easily defeat a game that plays itself?

Yeah, you’d think so, but this cooperative game is a bee-otch and the progression of evil is relentless! Jenne sat this one out and we sure could have used her help. The goal for the knights is to acquire twelve white swords before any one of several dark events occurs. Paul fell fighting the siege engines that had laid siege to Camelot itself. Ted and I fought on against the Picts, the Celts, the Black Knight, Mordred and Morgan le Fay. We had scored ten white swords, but the evil Morgan (a card draw) summoned three more siege engines to Camelot (bringing the number to 12!). The walls were breached and Camelot fell! This game is easy to play, but incredibly hard to win. We did a lot of crazy Monty Python-esque talking during this game, almost making it a role playing game. Another popular coop game is Lord of the Rings, and to those who have played LotR, I can tell you that Shadows Over Camelot is a lot harder. A lot! Despite the loose much fun was had by all and I am putting this on my “must buy” list of games. If you prefer games where you cooperate with the other players instead of competing with them, then I would say this is a game you should pick up.

Pirate’s Cove
Another favorite that is kept in an easily accessible spot in the closet oh games! If you like pirate themed things, then seriously consider picking up a copy of this game for your band of pirates! Pirate games are very popular and much fun. Talking like a pirate is not a requirement to play, but it does happen quite often during play, as does the quoting of pirate movies. In this game of high seas adventure the players compete to become the most famous Pirate by sailing around the six different islands collecting fame, fortune and treasure. The game lasts 12 turns and at the start of every turn, each pirate must secretly decide which of the 6 islands they will visit. All players reveal their destination simultaneously. If any two or more pirates end up at the same island, ARRR MATEY! combat ensues until only pirate ship remains and the others have fled. The pirate with the most fame at the end of twelve turns is the winner. We played three games and Ted came in last each time. We labeled him the worst pirate we had EVER heard of! And he responded by saying, “Arrh! That may be, but you have heard of me!” All righty, Jack Sparrow!

Carcassonne
This is a fairly light tile-laying game where players pull a tile from the pool and then place it against one of the previously played tiles. In doing so you complete roads, cities, special buildings and fields. You score points for having your control markers – they look like little people – on objects when they are completed. You also score points by placing one of your little people in the field on the tile you play as a farmer, but farmers aren’t scored until the end! So placing a farmer means you loose that control marker for the remainder of the game as it must stay in play on the field. It’s a very easy game to learn and play and it is much fun. The challenge comes in placing your control markers and then completing the objects to score points. The other players are placing tiles too, but you can bet that they aren’t going to place them where it would help you. We played two games of this and that damned Ted won both. CURSE HIM! This is another game that I am adding to my “must buy” list. I highly recommend this light and very entertaining game.

Next game entry I will talk about console/PC games...
Star Wars Battlefront II on Xbox
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth on Xbox
We Love Katamari! on Playstation 2
World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer on-line role playing game, AKA MMORPG, on computer (in my case, an iMAC)