Well, maybe cos nothing much had been going on... Was planning to go to a bike hash on Sunday, but skipped that cos wasn't feeling too well. The venue was also kinda far. And it has been raining recently so the tracks may be muddy. And also that I was at Settler's Cafe till 3am the night before.
I'm full of excuses. So will have to disappoint a few people. I'm sure more than a few were looking forward to hear about me getting injured again.
Was playing St. Petersburg, another boardgame by Rio Grande Games.These guys are also famous for the award winning Puerto Rico and Carcassone, both of which I had played before also. I had many good times with Puerto Rico at Wolf's. Was getting quite good at it too, and won that particular event in last year's Board-lympics, but I sucked at Boggle and lost overall.
These kind of games sometimes have a rather complicated mechanic that takes hours to figure out from reading the instructions. But if you can join a game with experienced players, where all you do is decide what your actions are, while the other players decide where to put the colonists and what's a legal or illegal move, then it's much easier to pick up these games and have a good time all around.
Puerto Rico is fun. It's pure strategy. No randomness, after you've determined starting order (but that's also a test of your adaptability). Except when you introduce a player who has no concept of game theory, however many times he has played the game already, and keeps making moves that will inadvertantly help another experienced opponent. Yes, there are players like this... He never wins, but his X-factor-ness does mess up your carefully planned moves.
Carcassone is also a fun game. But it does involve flipping up cards from a face down stack, so there's some luck of the draw. Sometimes, you just don't get the piece that will earn you the mucho points.
St. Petersburg is more like Carcassone, in the sense that there is an element of randomness.
Objective of the game: earn victory points.
There are four phases in the game:
-the worker phase, where you use your limited roubles, to buy some worker cards, which will then generate roubles for you every worker phase from here onwards.
-the building phase, where you buy buildings, which will mostly generate victory points every building phase.
-the aristocrat phase, where you buy aristocrats, which will generate roubles also, and sometimes victory points, but far less cost effective than workers.
-the upgrade phase, where some random cards might upgrade your worker/building/aristocrat into something else that's usually more efficient in terms of production : investment.
So it's a game of resource management. Invest in enough workers that will give you a ready supply of roubles, which you invest in building more buildings that will generate victory points for you. Also, having a collection of artistocrats will give you massive bonus victory points at the end of the game.
So there is a delicate balance of building a cashflow, while earning victory points, and collecting aristocrats to give you that big VP payout at the end.
Failed to win a single game. But it was entertaining nonetheless.
But for more laughs, play something like Jungle Fever.
It's basically like Snap! Players flip over cards from their deck, until there is a match, and quickly snatches a wooden totem placed in the table centre. The slow guy will pick up the cards already flipped over. The objective here is to loose all your cards.
It really brings out the jungle in you. Charging you with adrenaline so that you are ready to pounce on the totem. It's somewhat stressful too, cos the cards don't show numbers, but rather elaborate shapes. And many of these shapes are deceptively similar.
But if one player is left-handed... Expect some injuries to happen.
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