Struggle of Empires

Since there were seven of us, we sat down to play Struggle of Empires. I was the first time for some, and a long time for the rest of us. The rules explanation took 30 minutes and the game clocked in around 5 hours. The general consensus was it was a good game, but not worth the investment. I'm sure we could trim it down to 3 hours, but I'm not sure everyone is willing to give it another go. The round-by-round scores are below.

Player	Empire	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Final
Holt	Russia	18	41	62	62
Richard	Spain	19	38	60	60
Foster	Britain	14	30	55	51
Pete	France	14	28	50	50
Christian	Austria	22	38	52	48
Tell	Prussia	17	39	51	47
Chris	United Provinces	23	35	45	38

Gaming so far this year

All-Day Civ

I heard through the grapevine that a local group was trying to get a game of Civilization organized for the first Saturday in January. I was able to horn in on the game as the seventh player.

I had played before on the PC, but the few times I have played in person, we were only able to get a few turns into the game before having to abort. This time we blocked out 8 hours, so we were able to get much further into the game that I had before. Daniel had everything set up when I arrived, but we decided to play Advanced Civilization instead.

There were a few who hadn't played the game before and weren't "gamers," but we were able to explain the rules as we went - they caught on just fine. I was a little worried that a game of this magnitude, length, and conflict would lead to problems, but everyone handled themselves great.

I was able to score Babylon, supposedly one of the easier civs to play with. I had 7 sites to build cities and plenty of farmland. I was greedy at first, grabbing for extra city sites along the Mediterranean. This forced Asia to head into Asia Minor and tangle with Crete, while Egypt (who had migrated to grab the sites just south of me) and I were able to get a noticeable lead.

I realized that I had to do something to catch up to Egypt, but it took several turns of maneuvering to get my army in place to attack. We had just entered the Late Iron Age as I poised for an attack... then time ran out. We played the turn to an end and I was able to pick up 5 civilization cards with my best hand of trade cards all day. We didn't count up victory points - since we were playing to completion they wouldn't reflect a true winner. Italy didn't have many points at the time, but was primed to close out strongly.

My impression of the game only improved with this playing. The 8 hours flew by. The calamities are somewhat random and devastating, but did seem to keep the leaders in check more than anything else. One exception was Joe (Thrace) who got hit with Civil War, leaving him a small civ along the map border, then barbarians who ravaged his remaining tokens. He never could recover from that.

Trading proved to be a major factor. Tim (Egypt) was able to form valuable sets early and avoid all calamities. I'll have to remember that next time. I can't wait until then.

Other Games

I got to finally try Ys. You are primarly blind bidding, so there is a bit of guesswork as to what your opponents are doing, but the range of numbers you can bid is narrow enough to make the guesswork less of a crap shoot. There proved to be a lot more control than I expected. Thumbs up.

I played probably my quickest game of Saint Petersburg. We ran through the first two decks really fast, making my 5 aristocrats the top group. I was enough for me to win. This continues to be a 9/10 for me.

I forgot how great of a game Intrige can be. It's so fun to hear all of the false promises made and broken. The last round took 30 minutes which is way too long.

Settlers of Catan saw the table after a long hiatus. We played with the 5-6 Player expansion. Richard said he didn't like having both starting settlements on a 5 while not being on either a 6 or 8. Well, 5 came up a ton, especially early, allowing Richard to win without too much competition. It didn't hurt that an 11 gave him 5 brick and 3 ore while sitting on a brick port. We all agreed that we will use a dice deck and play with the food stamp variant next time.

Introduction

So I've decided to try a blog, at least for a year. (We'll see if we can make it that long.) I have no idea what all I'll put on this thing, but I figure it will be fun. Or it will become tedious quickly and I'll give up. Well, at least I have something to write about already, so let's get cracking.