BEWC Meeting Recap 10/15/11

Attendees: John Boyle, Dan Carey, Tom Dunford, Michael Feinberg, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Paul Unwin, Alex Wright, Elaine Wright

Club Business: None.

Games Played:

1) John, Tom, Michael F, and Joe played a bit of X-Men: Under Siege! despite not having a complete copy of the rules. There were some interesting mechanics, but the characters were rather unbalanced, with the weak characters prone to dying and their players being eliminated from the game. John was running away with the victory points when we called it quits.

2) John, Dan, Tom, Michael F, Joe, and Michael K played the club’s new copy of Power Grid. It was the first time playing for everyone except Michael F, but we quickly got into it. John, Joe, Tom, and Michael K all got to 14 connections on the same turn, but only Joe and Michael could power all 14, and Michael had the tiebreaker of more money remaining.

3) Tom, Michael F, Joe, Michael K, Paul, Alex, and Elaine next played Red Dragon Inn. After some fairly quick early eliminations, the game settled down to slow attrition, with eventually Tom’s Kaylin the Renegade drinking Joe’s Bremaster Phrenk under the table for the win.

4) While the Red Dragon Inn game was going on, Michael F and Paul played a round of Lost Cities, which Michael won.

5) Michael K and Paul played Pandemic with 6 epidemics and still managed to emerge victorious.

6) Tom, Michael F, Alex, and Elaine played Innovation. Michael was the only one with any experience with the game, which gave him a definite advantage to the game’s sometimes unclear strategies, and he also started with Agriculture and its early game point generation engine wasn’t something the other players were prepared to stop, giving him the win.

BEWC Meeting Recap 10/1/11

Attendees: Tom Dunford, Scott Harris, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Michael Feinberg

Club Business: The copy of Power Grid we voted to buy last meeting is on order and should arrive for the next meeting.

Games Played:

1) Scott, Michael, and Michael started with a game of Risk: 2210 AD. Scott took an early lead, taking control over the moon and most of the ocean territories, but Michael and Michael then ganged up on him. Michael F wasn’t able to hold on to Europe, which basically knocked him out of the game, but Michael K plowed through Scott’s forces on the moon and in South America and then used his stack of diplomacy cards to foil any attempts to take them back, giving him a commanding victory.

2) Tom, Scott, Michael, and Michael then played an epic (4 hours!) game of Cities and Knights of Catan. Tom took over for Scott who had to leave just after the set-up phase, and Scott’s settlement placement gave Tom a key early game monopoly for ore, preventing many knights from coming into play and allowing the first barbarian ship to arrive to raze Joe and Michael F’s cities. Michael F thought he was basically out of the game after the dice failed to give him any resources for the first three turns and then was penned in to just three settlements, but a pair of 2:1 trading harbors and early achievement of the aqueduct allowed him to turn all three of those settlements into cities and claim both the trade and science metropolises. Combined with the merchant and a victory point from a progress card, he was only one point from victory, which would have come when the barbarian ship next arrived and his six knights would have given him the Defender of Catan title, but Mike K had been steadily expanding and was able to snatch away both the trade metropolis and the longest road title (from Tom), pushing him to 14 victory points and his second win of the day.