WrightCon 2009

After a scheduling mishap early in the month, we finally worked it all out for a day-long session on July 26 up in the land of cheap beer (New Hampshire). Al hosted, so the day bears his name as the 'Con of the moment.

The usual suspects, Al, Joshua, Mike C., and Scott (Four Horsemen of the "Awww... I Just Missed!") attended, along with the most famous Phil Collins I'm ever likely to meet. So we had five players, which was great; though sadly we didn't take real advantage with a game of Dune.

In fact, we started the day with Railroad Tycoon, which has a game board as large as its payouts are small. My bad luck started the night before when my car battery died, so we didn't get started until 11:00 am (Mike kindly drove an extra hour to pick me up). All five played this game.

With 13 advantage cards to start, you'd expect the two-operations card to show, and of course it did right away. Joshua realized the value from the practice round they'd played earlier, so he bid high and won the right to go first. He took full advantage, connecting two cities in the northeast and delivering a good before the rest of us realized what happened. By the end of the first round, he had about nine victory points to second place's two or three.

And of course, that meant more income for Joshua which meant more track which meant more points which meant more income which meant more bonuses which meant... sigh, which meant that it looked like a runaway after about 15 minutes. Which, if you read this blog sounds about right for this group. But things don't usually stay that way for long.

The second round of bidding for pole position got a lot more interesting when Scott blurted out that a bonus was easily available to the first player. And Joshua's long-winded explanation of how valuable the bonus was brought about the quote of the day, courtesy of Mike: "Josh, you put the 'agony' in agonizing every move." Trust me, that was not the last time we heard *that* quote on the day -- and it probably won't be the last time we ever hear it, either.

Allan won that bid and completed a link that put him in a solid second. But the bidding cost him a bit too much so he had to borrow an extra $5,000 from the bank... and gave us our next quote of the day: "No, it *wasn't* worth the buck!"

As the game progressed, Joshua was in the mid-Atlantic, with Mike down south and Allan up north. Track was built and rebuilt to avoid using any else's rails. Scott had an east-then-midwest strategy and Phil strictly midwest (with a nice run through the center of the country). In fact, going west looked good for a while, as Phil and Scott kept their debt to a minimum and still made significant inroads. But there was too much "red" to deliver out there and too many tiles to build to Chicago (the only "red" city in the area) and those two butted heads ended up canceling each other out.

For a while it looked like it would be Joshua or Allan for the championship, though Joshua maintained his lead. But Mike made a lot of hay in the south and kept delivering and delivering among three cities. And a late push by Phil made a possible track bonus a big deal. However, even with Mike's late surge, it was Joshua who kept racking up the bonus points (first to use a three-train, first to buy a four-train, etc.), and he did end up with the win. After a two-hour game, here were the results:

Joshua = 49
Mike = 40
Phil = 34
Allan = 28
Scott = did not finish (actually, an embarrassing 21 points -- yuck!)

We broke for lunch at a great local rib joint (Goody Cole's Smokehouse -- try the frito dish; it's outstanding!) before heading back to beat each other into the ground.

Next up was a five player game of Caylus, one that we'd tried before but thought was unnecessarily complex. But Joshua arrived second so by tradition he got to call second game.

It started out simply enough, with Scott building three tiles and heading out to a commanding lead (about 18 to 8, I think). Mike got screwed by a few rules that he didn't think were made entirely clear -- you know, little things like not pissing off the King... TWICE! All the while, Phil and Allan built some stone and green buildings for decent VP and mounted their comeback.

Al passed Scott about halfway through by taking chances necessary to get some gold for large buildings and used very strategic placement of "the provost" (and late "passes" for good position on the bridge). Phil kept building small stuff, while Al and Joshua started converting pink buildings to VP-laden ones. VP for them, that is... naturally. And Joshua and Mike were still very far back, but Joshua hording goods, stacking them in sets of threes that looked destined to build the King's castle. But that wasn't his strategy, as you'll soon find out.

Turns out some of what Joshua was hording was gold, and on the very last turn, he went first and built the 25-VP building, which vaulted him from waaaaayyyyyy back into first. In fact, between that play and some other stuff, he scored at least 29 of his 69 total points on that turn alone! Which means he scored at least 42% of his points on one turn in a game with 15 or 16 turns.

So how did it all end up? Well, Scott did his best but couldn't overcome the combination Karama/Guild Hall/Emperor for Life scam that Joshua sniffed out. And so the final standings showed yet another victory for Joshua. "Curse you, Red Baron!"

Joshua = 69 (victory points)
Scott = 65
Mike = 56
Allan = 55
Phil = 52

Phil had to leave, so we finished up with a four-player Starfarer's of Catan, which might have some of the coolest pieces of any game ever. And let me say up front that Joshua's luck finally ran out -- he was dead last from the get-go. Of course, my luck hadn't changed since the dead battery, so I had high hopes for this one.

We started at 6:30, and by 6:35 Mike bemoaned not following his *own* strategy. He thought you should have a spaceport in the front row to enable easier ship launching, and then ended up with none there. He did okay, though, getting two trade ships out and landed (though with a bad event card one ended up taking forever). Joshua puttered around with lasers and boosters, as the resources just wouldn't come to help him build ships.

Allan and Scott were tooling around the universe, looking for decent places to land. And then it happened -- the oh-so-friendly Travellers gave space-jumps to Mike and Joshua. Josh's was lame, giving him a trade ship that he couldn't land. But Mike leveraged his to a landed trade ship (just ahead of Joshua), and before you knew it he had three of the "friend" disks (worth 2-VP each), and had vaulted out of the charity area to the lead.

Scott was sort of middle of the pack, using a space jump and spaceport strategically to enable ship launching from the middle of the board. But in the end, he didn't have the freight rings to land trade ships, and his strategy petered out. Maybe he was there just to make Joshua not feel entirely lame; I think Joshua was actually in VP deficit at one point :)

But Al mounted a furious comeback, building a laser-and-freight ring laden ship that blasted through "red" planets, getting VP for it. He even got a space jump (after much wailing at the cruel universe), and appeared poised to take the game.

However, in the end, Mike's lead was just too great, and when he bought the fame ring to end the game, Al thought he was two turns away. Final standings looked like this:

Mike = 15
Allan = 14
Scott = 10
Joshua = 9

So that was WrightCon 2009. Only three games, but still a heck of a lot of fun. Thanks to Al for hosting, to Mike for driving me up, and to Joshua for driving me home.

Be well, and I'll see you in the sand,

- Scott

CombsCon 2009

Hi all,

Allan, Joshua, Mike, and Scott got together on Saturday to eat bad food and play bad games... er, that is to say, play games badly. We got in five board games, and played exactly *one* of them without blowing at least one major rule. That's right, wicked experienced gamers mess up basic rules and throw the entire session into chaos; film at eleven. Oh well, when will we learn the most often given advice on this blog: "Read the rules!"

Anyhow, our first game was just with Allan, Joshua, and Scott (Mike was on a conference call). We played Caribbean, a light little game where you have pirate ships pick up and then deliver plundered booty. Seemed simple enough, with only a page and a half of rules, so what's to mess up, right? Well, turns out that in addition to getting paid for delivering the booty, you are supposed to get paid for picking it up! I guess that's what we get for being pirates.

It only took an hour, Allan won:

Allan 32

Scott 26

Joshua 24

The three of us promised to play it again by the actual rules. It was the first of many promises to be ignored on the day.

When Mike joined us, we tried The Pillars of the Earth, where you play builders in medieval England, trying to construct the most beautiful cathedral in the world. It started out well, with advice from the most experienced player simply not working out and lots of hilarity at bogus random events and such. Wasn't until the end that we realized that the most precious commodity in the game, metal, *cannot* be purchased at the market. But by then, it was too late -- and Allan had such a store of metal that the rest of us couldn't even benefit when the king decided to hand some out.

The outcome was preordained, and Allan converted that metal store into a four-point victory:

Allan 51

Joshua 47

Scott 45

Mike 44

Having blown a second game, we decided to play The Pillars of the Earth again, this time with the proper rules. Allan got seriously hosed by bad randomness. You don't roll dice in this game, but it was like hitting snake eyes four rounds in a row. Somehow he overcame that to come back strong. But Joshua edged Scott out for the Glassblower, and rode that to a shocking come-from-behind victory:

Joshua 50

Mike 46

Allan 43

Scott 37

Having seen enough of this game, we agreed on Power Grid next, a game of power plants that had us mostly sitting in the dark. You see, there's an auction for new plants, and for most of the game, when the auction ends you move the highest priced plant to the bottom of the deck. This guarantees that you don't get too much power capacity or spend too much money early in the game. Except, of course, when you are us and you forget to do it.

So in our version of the game, Joshua had three permanent plants before we finished a third of the game, and when we realized it, there was just no way to correct it. We concede the game to Joshua, though I am not counting it as a win. It was just too egregious of an error, so sorry Joshua, you'll have to forgo the victory on this one. Maybe we'll give *two* wins to whomever claims victory in our next game of Power Grid... the one where we READ THE RULES before starting :(

Next up, Starfarers of Catan, the space version of the classic Settlers of Catan. Starfarers has some of the coolest bits of any game in existence. Space ships that accept expansion boosters, lasers, freight rings, and fame rings. Very cool looking and very well thought out. So you might ask what mistake we made here. Well, in the very first turn, I was instructed to play without getting my free resource and without rolling for additional resources. So when I had to face a challenge, I decided not to give a resource (since I had so little) and my ships were grounded. They corrected Joshua when he did the same as I had done, but never went back to redo my turn -- which hamstrung me from the beginning.

There is some controversy about whether or not that constitutes a rules violation; but if they'd made Joshua go with his mistake I could have accepted it. But when he got a do-over... well, I vowed to use the blog to get my final say.

The game itself was a lot of fun, and even though he didn't realize it until we pointed it out, Joshua ended up winning:

Joshua 15

Allan 14

Mike 10

Scott 10

So all-in-all that is two victories for Joshua and two for Allan -- and a totally botched game of Power Grid. We never did get back to Caribbean, but who cares. If the rest of the day was any indication, we would have botched that one, too.

Besides, the best part of the day was the food -- that's all that really counted. Allan brought homemade salsa and the planet's best root beer, Capt'n Eli's. Scott brought homemade chocolate cookie dough and cooked it up during Starfarers. And Mike provided dinner. Of course, all Joshua handed out was ass-whippings, but that's about what we expect when playing with him.

A big "thank you" to our hosts, Mike & Anne. I had a great time and hope others did, too.

- Scott

PS. I updated the Overall Victories tote board.