Monthly Archives: February 2012

BEWC Meeting Recap 2/18/12

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Attendees: John Boyle, Dan Carey, Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Richard Heller, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Melissa Laface, Ian Rojas, Lane Taylor, and Alex Wright,

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) While waiting for morning stragglers, Michael F and Lane started with a quick game of Battle Line. Michael came to the edge of victory, having the card in his hand that would prove lane couldn’t beat a meld that would have given him his third adjacent flag for a breakthrough, but he didn’t have any remaining flags to play it on, and even if he could, Lane completed a meld on the next turn to give him five flags for an envelopment and the win.

2) John, Chris, Michael F, Joe, Ian, and Lane played A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. The game started with Michael’s House Stark and John’s House Greyjoy allying themselves in the north and a much looser alliance of Chris’s House Martell, Ian’s House Tyrell, Joe’s House Lannister, and Lane’s House Baratheon against them. The southern alliance got off to a shaky start when Martel took one of Baratheon’s strongholds (supposedly so Chris could show the rest of us who hadn’t played before how combat worked) but most of the conflict was between Greyjoy and Lannister as fleets battled for the west coast of Westeros. By mid game most players had acquired three of the seven necessary fortresses with Michael and Chris each having four and being well placed to expand, when Chris suddenly exploded into Ian’s territory taking all three remaining Tyrell fortresses in one turn and winning the game.

3) Dan and Michael K played the club’s new copy of Outpost. It was a learning game for both as they had never played it before. In the first era the game was fairly close as both players had the same number of victory points. Both built more water and ore factories, though Michael bought during the auction key items of technology that would help him down the road. In the second era Michael began to pull away, with his titanium factories and larger hand size. Dan was later able to buy robots, a laboratory and a new chemical factory to stay in the game, but could not close the gap. In the third era Michael’s resource advantages were simply too much for Dan to overcome. Michael was able to buy the very expensive moonbase which enabled him to reach 75 points to end the game. He won the game with the most points. Overall it was a fun game despite a few bumps along the way as both players learned the rules and how to apply them.

4) Chris, Michael F, Ian, Lane, and Alex played a half game of Shogun, deciding to stop after the first scoring round and not continue on to the second year as we wouldn’t have had enough time to finish it. Winter was a brutal -7 food, causing everyone to suffer varying degrees of shortages and revolts. Alex lost one province to revolt, but Michael was extremely unlucky, not only losing both of his revolting provinces (by the barest possible of margins) but also having them be strategically critical ones whose loss cost him 9 points that would have given him a comfortable victory. In the end, Chris was victorious with 22 points, followed by Ian and Lane, and then Michael and Alex beat back to 17.

5) Richard and Melissa’s timing was off from everyone else’s games, so played a two player game of Uwe Rosenberg’s new game Ora et Labora, unfortunately running out of time to finish it before the rec center closed.

6) Chris, Michael F, Ian, and Lane finished up with a game of Bohnanza, given the luck of the cards, Michael ended up concentrating on planting numerous low value beans, which in turn led to receive lots of free cards as the other players tried to get them out of their hands, and a comfortable victory with 29 points.

BEWC Meeting Recap 2/4/12

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Attendees: John Boyle, Dan Carey, Michael Feinberg, Ryan Frans, Brandon James, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Dave Olson, Jay Olson, Alex Wright, and Elaine Wright

Club Business: None.

Games Played
1) John, Dan, Michael F, Joe, Michael K, and Dave L played Battlestar Galactica with the Exodus expansion – using the new characters and cards, the cylon fleet board, and the final five loyalty cards. Even though it turned out there was no cylon in play at the beginning of the game, the system really beat up on the humans, but spread the damage out so that none of the dials were in the red at the halfway point, causing Michael K’s Boomer’s to side with the cylons when he received the sympathizer card. After the cylon fleet wreaked havoc on the civilian fleet and Dave’s Baltar revealed himself as a cylon things were looking quite grim for the humans. Suspicions were also also high, as there should have been one more cylon player, but almost miraculously the humans were able to hold on for the final jump to Kobol. The human victory was dependent on a really luck break though – with the exodus expansion the loyalty deck includes one extra card to account for possible executions and against the odds, it was the last cylon card that was not dealt out.

2) Brandon and Karen played three rounds of Wings of War: Dawn of War, with Brandon winning two and Karen one.

3) Dave O, Joe, Alex, and Elaine played Small World where Alex won with a commanding 107 points due to his pillaging gypsies.

4) Michael F, Michael K, and Elaine played Agricola, allowing Elaine to break her Agricola loosing streak when she beat Michael F by 1 point.

5) Joe, Dave L, Karen, and Alex played Ra with Dave winning.

6) Dan, Brandon, Dave O, and Jay broke in the club’s new copy of Ascending Empires, with Dan being the inaugural victor.

7) Lack of table space exiled Dave O and Alex to the kitchen for a head-to-head match up in Hannibal, where reportedly Dave’s Carthaginians marched all over Alex’s Romans.

8) Michael F, Ryan, Brandon, Joe, Michael K played a second round of Battlestar Galactica with the Exodus expansion, this time also adding in the personal goal loyalty cards. This games started almost the exact opposite from the first, with the humans having the easiest time any of us had seen, with resource dials actually going up instead of down. Things started to change after Ryan fulfilled his personal goal and had to draw a new loyalty card, which was a cylon. After some subtle working against the humans, he revealed himself, sending Michael F’s Starbuck to the brig, where he ended up stuck for the rest of the game. While it was unlikely any of the resource dials were going to be depleted, Galactica was accumulating damage and things were looking unexpectedly tight for the humans. Mike K then unexpectedly used Helo’s moral compass ability to force a bad choice on a crisis card, making it clear he was a cylon just before he revealed himself. With two cylons each using the basestar bridge to do two points of damage to galactica, plus potentially moving the jump track back, it didn’t seem like there was much change left for the humans who only had two players not in the brig. Some lucky rolls however allowed Brandon’s Adama to nuke most of the cylon fleet into oblivion and a well timed draw of a repair card allowed FTL control to be repaired, letting Joe’s boomer jump the fleet to Kobol just before the next cylon turn which would have destroyed Galactica.

9) Karen and Dave finished the day off with a game of Metro.

2012 Officers and New Games

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2012 Officers elected:
President: Dave Olson
Vice President: Dave Landon
Treasurer: John Boyle
Secretary: Michael Feinberg

New Games have arrived: Ascending Empires,  Battlestar Galactica: Exodus Expansion, Kingsburg, the Kingsburg: To Forge A Realm Expansion, and the new Stronghold Games reprint of Outpost.