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BEWC Meeting Recap 9/7/13

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Attendees:Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Alex Jordan, Dan Carey, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Chris Cregan,  Brandan James, Mike Kelly, and Tyler Piersol

1) Two games of Resistance were played while people waited for the full group to show.  The Resistance won the first game with Karen, Alex, Dan, Mike F against Jim and Dave.  The 2nd game had Dave swapped teams with Karen, but in the end the spys still lost.

2) Next up was a game to decide who would be King of Tokyo.  Karen and Alex died not being able to withstand from repeated attacks by Dave and Michael in Tokyo.  Dave died shortly after followed by both Michaels.  Ultimately, Brandon won.

3) Jim and Dan played a side game of Twilight Struggle.  Dan as Russia got off to a slow lead but Jim as the Americans managed to pull ahead as the years progressed.

4) Chris, Michael F, Dave and Alex played a game of Love Letter while things were being set up for Battlestar.  Alex ended up being the most successful letter deliverer person.

5) Having recently acquired the Daybreak expansion to Battlestar Galactica, this game was eager joined.  Unfortunately, the game turned out to be a little dull, with an easy human win.  It was Alex and Tyler’s first game of any Battlestar variant, and both spent the majority of the game stuck.  Alex was the mutineer and spent his entire game playing mutiny cards, though managed to successfully avoid getting sent to the brig because of it.  Tyler wasn’t so lucky, and spent the entire game there as Tom Zerich, in addition to having BOTH cylon cards.  Dave played as the Cylon Leader and was fortunate enough to have allegiances to the humans and shared their victory.  Michael F and K, Chris and Alex were the humans.

6) Meanwhile, Karen Jim and Dan played a series of games during the Battlestar game.  First up was Guillotine.  In a series of three games Karen won 2 and Jim won 1.

7) Karen continued her winning streak at Ticket to Ride.  She won with 130 points to Dan’s 89 and Jim’s 80.

8) Finally, Bang was played but was very short.  Michael F, Dave and Karen were the Outlaws and quickly surrounded and then finished off Tyler as the Sheriff.  Deputy Chris and Renegade Brandon were unable to do anything being to far away.

BEWC Meeting Recap 8/17/2013

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Attendees: Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran

Games Played:

1) Jim and Michael started off with a game of Tsuro, with Jim winning.

2) Jim triumphed over Michael in a game of Guillotine 46-38.

3) In Kingsburg final scores were Chris 59, Michael 38, Jim 36.

4) In Guildhall Michael beat both Jim and Chris

5) In Twilight Struggle Chris as the commies managed to goad Jim as the Americas to plunge the world into nuclear winter after a (successful) coop attempt in Cuba while on Defcon4. Technically making Chris the winner.

BEWC Meeting Recap 8/3/13

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Attendees: Mellissa Bassett, Bruce Clark, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Brandan James, Alex Jordan, Joe Kauffman, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, and Dave Olson

Games Played:

1) Bruce, Brandan, Alex and Dave L started off with Blokus, with Dave winning.

2) Brandan and Dave L settled in for War of the Ring, where Dave L achieved a military victory for the forces of Sauron.

3,4) Bruce, Michael, Jim, Alex, and Dave O played two quick games of Tsuro. Dave won the first, and Alex the second.

5) Bruce, Michael, Jim, Alex, Karen and Dave O moved on to Flash Point: Fire Rescue where we successfully got 7 victims out of the hotel with no fatalities.

6) Mellissa, Jim, and Joe played Rune Wars. Joe’s elves suborned a neutral dragon on the first turn and the threat of his forces kept Melissa penned in. Surviving severe clashes in the center of the map, Joe was victorious.

7) Bruce, Michael, Alex, and Dave O learned Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game (the 2010 Fantasy Flight version, not the 2002 Eagle Games version). Despite the complexity and only Bruce having played before, we made relatively few rules errors. Alex’s Egyptians got out to an early lead with strong city development and moved well on the way towards both the technological and economic victory conditions. His neighbor Bruce’s Russians had been building up their military and moved in to try and slow him down. Dave’s Americans were also moving towards the tech victory condition and joined in on sniping at Alex. With Bruce and Alex concentrating on each other, Michael’s Romans continued their steady progress up the culture track and achieved a cultural victory, one turn before Alex would have made it to the economic victory.

8,9) Brandan, Dave L, and Karen played two rounds of Attika, with Dave winning both.

10) Brandan and Karen played two hands of Lost Cites and Karen ran away with both.

11) Dave L and Karen taught Brandan Galaxy Trucker, with Dave winning yet again.

12,13) Brandan, Dave L, and Karen played two games of Ticket to Ride. First was the Switzerland map where Brandan won, followed by India which Karen dominated.

BEWC Meeting Recap 7/20/13

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Attendees: Dan Carey, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Alex Jordan, David Knoyle, and Dave Olson

Games Played:
1) While waiting for more people to show up, Michael and Dave started off with Innovation. Early on, Michael was able to set up a scoring/achieving engine through the use of gunpowder and took the first five age achievements and seemed like he would run away with the game. Dave got combustion though and quickly stole all of the score back and took the age six through eight achievements and had plenty of score to pick up his fourth (the age 9). Michael however had been accumulating deep stacks of cards and once he was able to find some dogma effects to splay them, had more than three of each type of symbol, allowing him to claim the empire achievement, which was the sixth needed for him to win.

2) Dan, David, and Dave spent the bulk of the day playing GMT’s Andean Abyss. Dan was the government player, in charge of the police and army.  Dave K. played two sides, the AUC (right wing paramilitary) and the drug cartels.  Dave O. was the FARC, the Marxist guerillas.  The game started off with all building up their forces.  For most of the first third of the game, Dan’s population was in the 40’s, short of his victory condition of 60.  Dave K.’s cartels, which want to make money and stay out of the way, were not doing well and ran low on resources.  His AUC forces slowly built strength and amassed quite a bit of resources.  Dave O’s FARC got all of their units out on the board and built up their strength.
In the second third of the game, with Pastrana as president, Dave O’s FARC was able to establish some zones were he was safe from Dan’s government forces.  However, Dan’s army and police kept after Dave’s guerillas outside of those areas, holding the initiative by forcing them to stay on the run.  Dan did not build up much popular support but Dave O., did not do much to take any away.  Dave K’s AUC was able to get most of their bases out, but did not out number the FARC, the AUC victory condition.  The cartels started to amass more resources.
In the last part of the game, Uribe was elected president, so the FARC no longer had safe zones.  However, the FARC holed up in a few departments and was able to stave off any possible government assault.  Dan then went after the AUC, which were growing strong.  That knocked them down a bit.  He was also able to drive the cartels out of Cali, improving his popular support.  Otherwise the cartels amasses an immense amount of resources and were flirting meeting their victory conditions (>10 bases, >40 resources).  Dave O., and Dan took steps to eliminate some of the cartel bases to prevent a victory.
The end of the game came six cards from the bottom of the stack.  No one won the game out right.  Dan was able to increase his popular support some though.  With the tie breaker rules, Dave K., won, as his AUC and cartels were closest to their victory conditions, just ahead of Dan.  Dave O.’s FARC came in third.  Overall the game took five hours.

3) Michael, Jim, and Alex played Lords of Waterdeep. It was a close game, but getting the lieutenant (and it’s extra worker) as one of Michael’s starting quests gave him the advantage he needed to win with 112 points to Jim’s 106 and Alex’s 104.

4) Michael, Jim, and Alex moved on to 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. On totaling up the score, it looked like Alex had won with his 66 points from a fairly diverse strategy, but upon checking the math, Michael just edged him out with 68 points, mostly from three full sets of science (48 points).

5) Moving on to something more cooperative, Michael, Jim, and Alex played Pandemic at the normal five epidemic difficulty level. The epidemics seemed stacked to the top of the deck, but they managed to quickly sunset red, giving them some breathing room. Blue was also then sunset and it looked like they might run away with the game when outbreaks in the Middle East and Africa pushed the game to the brink. Cards were in hand to cure yellow and black but pretty much any yellow card coming up would have caused two more outbreaks and a lost game. Luckily, the cards were kind and the diseases were cured, just before another epidemic card would have been drawn.

6,7) Michael, Jim, and Alex then played two games of Settlers of Catan. The first game was fairly balanced with everyone around 6 or 7 points, when Michael was able to steal Alex’s longest road which combined with a point from a development card got Michael to 10 points and the win. The second game had an odd map set up, where Michael, despite being first player and getting last pick of locations, was able to get an almost perfect settlement selection with all resource types in high probability mid numbers. The dice were definitely in his favor, bringing in large quantities of lumber and bricks, allowing a huge road network to divide up the board in his favor and he ran away with the game in a quick victory.

8) Michael, Jim, Alex and Dave finished up with Love Letter, where Jim was most effective in getting his notes to the princess.

BEWC Meeting Recap 7/6/13

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Ryan Frans, Jim Halloran, Brandan James, Amanda, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, and Dave Olson

Games Played:

1) Brandan and Dave L spent most of the day playing The Guns of Gettysburg, where Dave repeated history with a union victory.

2, 3) Michael, Ryan, Karen, and Dave O started with two games of Tsuro, which both ended with Dave winning and Michael in second.

4,5) Michael, Ryan, Karen, and Dave O moved on to Ryan’s new copy of Quarantine Z. In the first game, Dave was the zombie player and completely annihilated the human players. In the second, Michael was the zombie and the humans were able to hunker and down and burn through most of the zombie deck, looking like they would have an easy victory. Michael was able to find some reasonable zombies though and while attempting to escape from a combat, Ryan and Karen managed to blow themselves up with C4. That left just Dave and MIchael was able to kill him with some of his last cards, just squeaking out another zombie victory.

6) Michael, Ryan, Jim, Karen, and Dave O then played Alien Frontiers with the Factions expansion, where Ryan handily won.

7,8) Michael, Ryan, Jim, Karen, and Dave O switched to Cosmic Encounter. The first game was dominated by Karen’s use of the power of the loser, leading to her victory, while Ryan and Dave tied the second game.

9) Michael, Ryan, Brandan, Jim, Karen, Dave L and Dave O came together for a big game of Robo Rally. Ryan was ahead early and while a few other people got the third flag and almost caught him, Ryan held on for victory at the fourth flag.

10,11) Everyone then moved over to Bang!. In the first game, Dave O was the sheriff and one of his deputies, Ryan, was the first to fall, followed quickly by the three outlaws, leaving just Dave O, Michael, and Brandan. Michael managed to convince Dave that Brandan, was the renegade, but it didn’t matter as Brandan killed Michael, the actual renegade, for a law victory. In the second game, Ryan was the sheriff, and the outlaws thought things were looking good when Karen, sitting next to him, acquired a volcanic and a whole pile of bangs, but it turns out she was a deputy and actually killed Dave L, the renegade. With Ryan flanked by his other deputy, Dave O, the three outlaws soon fell for another law win.

12) Michael, Ryan, Brandan, Amanda, Karen, and Dave L finished off a long day of gaming with Scotland Yard. Ryan was Mr. X and on his first reveal successfully doubled back on the ferry and almost broke free, the investigators were able to keep decent track of him though and managed to corner him on turn 20.

BEWC Meeting Recap 6/15/13

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Greg Chandra, Ryan Frans, Chris Cregan and Dave Olson

1) Android was the first game.  Ryan was the only experienced player and ended up winning due to a good start.  The conspiracy was quickly filled in, to the detriment of most players starting story mission.  Through out the game there was a battle between the spacers and those earth bound for clues, each side trying to keep clues on their side of the atmosphere.

2+3)Guillotine was next.  A simple card game in which a queue of French aristocrats line up to have their heads chopped off.  Most of the game was manipulating the line to get the more valuable nobles up when it was your turn with the axe.  Michael won both games handilly by picking on the guards whose point value varies based on the total number of guards.

4) Finally a game of Robo Rally was played.  Michael managed to complete his hat trick with this game by getting all the objectives.  Greg was determined to be in 2nd place as the last robo-man standing due to his opponents all self-destructing.

 

BEWC Meeting Recap 6/1/2013

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Attendees: Chris Cregan, Michael Kelly, Michael Fineberg, Alex Wright, Brandon James, John Boyle, Bruce Clark, Joe Kauffman, Dave Landon

1) Chris, Michael F, Alex, Brandon, Dave and Bruce played a “short” game of Twilight Imperium.  It was most everyone’s first or second game, and turned into a big learning experience for all.  In the end it was a close race, with most everyone competing for the win the final turn mostly due to a stronger presence on Mecatol Rex for the majority of the game.  The 2nd to last turn Chris took the center planet using an army built up over the entire game.  Even then it took Dave invading Michael’s territory, taking his capitol planet to prevent a potential counterattack.  The next turn though saw Dave move in on Chris’ territorys in a bid to take two enemies home systems, which was an outright win condition.  Unfortunatly he only took half of the home planets, which was not enough for Dave.  It was enough to prevent Chris from achieving points from his Mecatol conquest.  Brandon, having played the entire game at peace with his neighbor Michael finally declared war attempting to get his secret objective complete.  Unfortunatly, a nebulus blocked his army from invading too far in and Michael was able to win with 9 VP.

2) In non-twilight related news: some people lost game, others won, maybe some ties…  I think a game of Power Grid happened.

BEWC Meeting Recap 5/18/2013

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Attendees: Chris Cregan, Michael Kelly, Jim Halloran, Bruce Clark

1)  Jim and Bruce started off with a game of Lost Cities with Bruce ending up winning out in the end.

2)  In the first Flash Point: Fire Rescue game Chris and Bruce ran in through the front door trying to stabilize and escort victims while Mike and Jim went through the back to dispose of flammable materials.  Unfortunately, several explosions in the kitchen quickly brought the structure down before even one survivor could be rescued.

3) Determined to do better the team returned to the building in another round of Flash Point: Fire Rescue.  Chris and Bruce entered the house, Bruce fought fires directly while Chris eliminated hazardous materials.  Mike and Jim oversaw things from the truck, directing movements and spraying areas with the hose.  The fire was kept at bay long enough for seven survivors to make it out.

4) Tired of all the Cooperative niceness a game of Dungeon Lords was opened up.  Jim built a powerful hero annihilating machine, only losing one tunnel to the good guys the entire game.  Michael on the other hand ran a very vigorous PR campaign and stayed within the first tier of evilness the entire game, ending at his starting level.  Bruce, with his host of vampires and ghosts attracted the attention of the paladin.  He managed to beat the Paladin but exhausted most of his resources and lost his entire dungeon in the last year.  Chris hoarded money and constructed the largest of all the dungeons.  In then end: Chris 33, Jim 20, Mike 17 and Bruce at 11.

BEWC Meeting Recap 5/04/2013

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Chris Cregan, Michael Kelly, Dan Carey, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Brandan James, Josh Lichti, Alex Wright, Elaine Wright, Ryan Frans, Rhonda Frans and John Boyle

Games Played

1)Ticket To Ride Switzerland.  John won with 111, followed by Michael F at 101 and Brandon with 100.

2)Medici.  Dan 161, Dave 141 and Jim 79.

3)Merchant of Venus.  Brandan 3010, Jim 2240 Chris 1770

4) King of Air and Steam.  Michael K 143, Dave L 135, Josh L 158, Dan C 135, Michael F 150 and John B 145

5) Hansa. Ryan 57 Alex 56

6) Airlines:Europe.  Karen L. 106, Ryan 92, Dave L 76 Michael K 68 Rhonda 58

7) Castles of Burgundy.  Michael F 238, Alex -225, Elaine 199, Dan 183

8) Scotland Yard.  Dave as Mr X was captured by the detectives Ryan, Michael K, Karen, and Alex.

9)Dominion: Seaside.  Jim 30, Chris 28, Michael F 26 and Dan 5 (Dan’s first game of Dominion).

10)Dominion: Hinterlands.  Michael F 38, Chris 26, Jim 19.

11)Wings of War: Dawn of War.  Dave and Michael commanding an axis team (with French support) faced off against Chris, Karen and Brandan as the Allies.  After quickly losing Michael’s plane and one of Dave’s two, Dave was able to take on all three allies plane with his one remain and won.

12)Medici.  Chris 125, Michael F 104, Karen 100, Dave 98, Brandan 94

13)Medici.  Chris 102, Michael F 105, Karen 107, Dave 107, Brandan 81

BEWC Meeting Recap 4/20/2013

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Chris Cregan, and Dave Olson

Games Played

1) Alea Iacta Est was brought out to determine who was the better Roman senator.  Michael focused heavilly on Patricians and Senate and ended up with a total 36 points.  Dave focused more on provinces while mostly ignoring the Senate and ended with 25.  Jim had a diversified stratedgy and ended with 26.  Chris focused on Patricians and Provinces and ended with 36 points.  In all tie breakers Chris and Michael were even and thus grudgingly shared victory.

2) Dave began to set up the 3rd game and so did not participate in a game of Stone Age.  It was Jim’s first game and ended up with 128.  Chris managed to have the most tools, people and farms but still only ended in 2nd with 165.  Michael ended the game thus wasting the fewest resources and getting 169 points mostly through huts and artifacts.

3)Continuing the trend of JRR Tolkein inspired games the group divided up into two teams of good (Michael and Chris) versus evil (Jim and Dave) in War of the Ring.  Evil started off strong, crushing Rohan in the first few turns while good spent their time getting the northern men into the war.  The Fellowship quickly lost Gandalf, but due to Saurmans intervention Gandalf the White was quicly brought into play.  This seemed to turn the tide, rallying in Minas Tirath he defended the city from the first incursion of Saurons forces, negating a large Ringwraith presence.  Over the next several turns Good fortified the walled town and Evil was not able to advance.  The fellowship made it down to the city with almost no corruption, though they had lost everyone but Frodo and Sam.  The journey from Gondor to Mordor would prove more difficult and quickly gained corruption.  Evil finally won a few steps from Mt. Doom.