Category Archives: Meeting Recaps

BEWC Meeting Recap 8/20/11

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Thanks to John Boyle for the meeting Minutes

Attendees:

Scott Harris, Joe Kauffman, John Boyle, Josh Lichti, Michael Kelly, Jesse Lute, Dave Olson (for 5 minutes), Chad Willard & Haley Willard

Game 1: 7 Wonders

Scott, Joe, John. Scott won with 57 points focusing mostly on Blue VP and 15 points on the Pyramids, Side A.

It was Joe’s first game

Game 2: 7 Wonders. Jesse and Josh showed up.

Scott, Joe, John, Jesse, Josh

Josh squeaked out a first place win with 47 points, combining 16 points in science with 21 points in Blue VP. Jesse and Joe were a close second with 46 points.

It was Josh and Jesse’s first game.

Game 3: 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion. Michael Kelly showed up.

Scott, Joe, John, Jesse, Josh, Michael

This was Michael’s first game of 7 Wonders period, but everyone’s first game with the Leaders expansion. The expansion introduces a new game mechanic via Leader cards. Before Age I begins, all players are dealt 4 Leader cards. Each player selects one card and passes the rest to the next player (just like the regular game). Continue until everyone has 4 cards.

Now, at the beginning of each Age, each player selects a Leader card to play. The leader cards provide similar abilities or resources found in the base game such as more resources, extra gold, science symbols, etc. However, there are new abilities such as allowing the player to spend one less of any resource for the different colors of cards, or increasing the Money bonus at the end of the game. It’s almost like playing with 3 extra Wonder abilities which really mixes the game up in a fun way.

Scott won Game 3 with 61 points, banking up an impressive 23 blue card VPs, despite Jesse’s dominance with 28 science points.

Game 4: 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion

Scott, Joe, John, Jesse, Josh, Michael

The final 7 wonders game of the day ended in a second Josh victory with 63 points (26 of which were blue cards). Scott was second place with 58 points, 43 of which were Science. He had two leaders that gave him extra science symbols, but it wasn’t enough to pull ahead.

Overall, I think everyone enjoyed the Leaders expansion, though it may have been a bit overwhelming for some of the new players (except Josh, obviously).

Game 5: Pandemic + expansion.

Jesse, Scott, Joe, Michael, John

This game was a nail-biter, going down to the wire.

Jesse: Scientist

Scott: Troubleshooter

Joe: Ops Expert

Michael: Researcher

John: Epidemiologist

The group got out to a decent start, quickly curing 3 of the 4 diseases. However, in addition to the 4th disease, since we were playing the expansion, we also had to deal with the occasional mutation. Our predicament came when we were on the brink of several fatal outbreaks and we had enough cards to cure the final disease and mutations, but didn’t seem to have enough turns or actions to get the cards and the pawns to the right place at the right time. Scott was able to switch to medic partway through to help and with a LOT of discussion, planning, and replanning (and a lot of luck), we managed to cure the mutation with no margin to spare.

We did realize, though, that for part of the game we hadn’t been properly adding mutation tokens, but figured it all evened out in the end and still counted it as a solid win.

Scott and John Left.

Games 6+: Chad Willard and his daughter showed up and played some games they brought with them. I don’t know how those games went since I left by then.

BEWC Meeting Recap 8/6/11

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Attendees: Eric Bowen, Jason Bowen, Jeff Bowen, Josh Bowen, Scott Harris, Brandon James, Michael Kelly, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Dave Olson, Jay Olson

Games Played:

1) Scott, Brandon, Dave L. and Karen played Thurn and Taxis, with Scott giving Scott a chance to show his prowess at delivering mail in Germany.

2) Michael, Dave O. and Jay played Piretenbucht (Pirate’s Cove). Jay pulled ahead to a commanding lead in the end to claim the title of most feared pirate on the high seas.

3,4,5) Michael, Dave O. and Jay played 3 games of Code 777. Dave O. picked up 2 wins, and Jay won one.

6) Scott, Brandon, Dave L and Karen played Tigris and Euphrates with Dave dominating the game.

7) Dave L and Brandon played Pandemic, and they were successful in curing all four diseases and saving the world. Thanks guys.

8) Michael, Dave O. and Jay played Vegas Showdown. The scores were pretty close throughout, but Dave O. was able to pull away in the end for the win.

9) Brandon, Dave L. and Karen played Wings of War: Dawn of War, with Karen taking the win.

10) Eric, Jason, and Josh played Survive: Escape from Atlantis. Not sure who won that one.

11) Michael, Dave O. and Jay played Saboteur, with Dave O. and Jay in a tie for the win.

12) Michael, Brandon, Dave O. and Jay played Ticket to Ride: Europe. Michael and Brandon were fighting it out for the lead, with Brandon coming out on top in the end.

13) Eric, Jason, Jeff, Josh, Dave L. and Karen played Citadels. Karen ran away with this one.

14) Michael, Dave O. and Jay took a crack at Pandemic. With 2 outbreaks on the first (maybe second) turn, it was an uphill battle. Unfortunately, that battle was lost.

15) Dave L., Karen, Dave O. and Jay played Galaxy Trucker, with Dave L. taking a commanding win.

BEWC Meeting Recap 7/16/11

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Attendees: Jason Bowen, Kelly Burnaby, Zachary Burnaby, KC Deitrick, Joe Kauffman, Ryan Frans, Michael Feinberg, Scott Harris, Michael Kelly, Ed McGran

Club Business: None

Games Played:

1) Ryan, Jason, Ed, KC, and Michael F played Thunderstone. It was the first time playing for everyone but Ryan, who had a commanding win, but Jason put in a decent showing for second place.

2) Kelly, Zachary, Joe, and Jason played Starcraft, where the Protoss dominated the Terrans, with Kelly winning as Tassadar and Jason coming in second as Aldaris over Zachary’s Jim Raynor and Joe’s Arcturus Mensk.

3) KC and Ryan played Combat Commander: Europe with Ryan’s Germans defeating KC’s Russians in the Bonfire of the NKVD scenario.

4) Scott, Ed, Michael K, and Michael F played Dungeon Lords. It was the first time playing for everyone and it was initially pretty slow going as we taught the game to ourselves (leading to a number of overlooked and misplayed rules), but it ended up being a lot of fun. Michael F won and Ed also managed to score enough points to earn his dungeon lord license, while Scott and Michael K were done in by back taxes – it probably would have helped if we had read enough of the rules to have known that taxes were coming due….

5) KC, Michael K, and Michael F played Innovation. Some lucky dogma effects and factory dominance gave Michael F an early win.

BEWC Meeting Recap 7/2/11

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Attendees: John Boyle, Joe Kauffman, Rhonda Frans, Ryan Frans, Michael Feinberg, Scott Harris, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, David Olson, Jay Olson

Club Business: None

Games Played:

1) Dave L, Karen, and Joe played Attika with Dave winning.

2,3) John, Dave L, Scott, and Karen played a round of 7 Wonders that Dave won, and then Michael joined them for a second round where Scott came back from his tied for last position in the first game to win.

4) Ryan, Dave O, Jay, and Joe played a close game of Nightfall that Joe won.

5,6) John, Dave L, Scott, and Michael played two rounds of Innovation. For the first game, John was the only one that had played before (though not in some time) and we misplayed several rules before John took an early fairly unbalanced victory. The second game went much better and was neck and neck through much of the game, before a lucky card transfer allowed Michael to claim his 4th (winning) achievement right before Dave could.

7,8) Ryan, Dave O, Jay, and Joe played two games of Thunderstone. It was the first time playing for everyone, with Joe winning the first game, and Dave O winning the second much tighter lower scoring game.

9) John, Dave L, Karen, Rhonda, and Michael played Vinci, and despite some early runaway leaders the game ended quite close for everyone. Dave managed to achieve exactly the 100 points to trigger the last round, and Michael was one troop short of being able to gain 100 points himself, and had to settle for second place with 99 points.

10) The group successfully guesses several cases from Crack the Case with Joe as the moderator.

11) Joe, Dave O, Dave L, Jay, Ryan, and Michael played Battlestar Galactica. It was a fairly uneventful first half of the game, but after the sleeper agent phase, Ryan as Baltar determined that Dave O as Boomer was a cylon and sent him to the brig. Michael as Adama was the other cylon and played it covertly for a few turns until using the admiral’s ability to choose the jump effects to pick a particularly devastating card and then revealed himself before he could be sent to the brig himself. The situation was dire for the humans with all of their resource dials near critical, and it then looked like the game was over when two centurion boarding parties were poised to take over the Galactica on the next cylon turn, but their scout managed to delay the boarding party and then some key rolls from Jay wiped out the centurions and moved the humans into position to jump to Kobol and win the game. But just when the cylons in turn had given up hope, a lucky shot from one of their basestars damaged the jump control room and trapped the humans. It was not to be however, as the control room was repaired and the fleet jumped to safety before the cylons could capitalize on the delay.

BEWC Meeting Recap 6/19/11

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Attendees: Jason Bowen, Jeff Bowen, John Boyle, Michael Feinberg, David Olson, Jay Olson, Chad Willard

Club Business:

We voted to purchase Innovation and Ticket To Ride: Europe

Games Played:

1) John and Michael played two rounds of Lost Cities, with John winning 32 to 23.

2) John, Jay, Jason, Dave, and Michael played 7 Wonders where Dave edged out John for the win with 58 victory points.

3) John, Jason, and Michael played Mansions of Madness scenario 1B “The Fall of the House of Lynch” with John as the keeper and Jason and Michael each controlling two investigators. It’s a fairly complex game and I was worried about the puzzles being distracting, but we made short work of those (to the keeper’s frustration). The investigator’s early success in the search for clues turned into a long weaponless slog through the mansion harried by a maniac and with Ashcan Pete always on the verge of insanity. After the diabolical plot was revealed, we thought we had no chance to stop it, but a well timed reveal of the final clue stunned the Shoggoth and it was trapped in the collapsing mansion giving the investigators a somewhat pyrrhic victory (they too were trapped in the mansion, but surviving apparently wasn’t part of the victory condition). Mansions played much faster than Arkham Horror or Descent (which it shares many elements with, along with Betrayal at House on the Hill) allowing us to finish just as John needed to leave, but we benefited from John having done a lot of the scenario deck building ahead of time, otherwise setup looks very time consuming.

4) Dave, Jay, and Chad played Middle Earth Quest where Dave was victorious as Sauron.

5) Jason and Michael played three rounds of Lost Cities. It was Jason’s first time playing and in the third round he’d picked up the game enough to double Michael’s score for that round, but Michael had the overall victory.

6) Jason and Michael played Dominion: Intrigue where Jason’s deck got bogged down with too many action cards and not enough money, allowing Michael to overtake his early lead for the win.

7) Chad, Jay, Jason, Dave, and Michael played Bang! with the new Wild West Show Expansion. Jason and Michael managed an outlaw victory, despite being the first two players eliminated. Teren Hill’s (Dave) special ability kept the Renegade barely alive an extra half dozen or so turns with the Deputy (Chad) and the Sheriff (Jay) ganging up on him and it looked like a sure law win until the dynamite went off.

BEWC Meeting Recap 6/6/11

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Attendees: John Boyle, David Landon, Karen Landon, Dave Olson

Club Business: Mansions of Madness, Lost Cities, and Bang! Wild West Show have arrived and are in the club cabinet.

Games Played:

1) John, Karen Dave L. and Dave O. played Hamburgum. Karen and Dave L were dominating early in the game, but in the end all players were grouped nicely on the score track, with Dave O. edging out the win.

2) Dave L and John took on Karen and Dave O. in a game of Blokus. It was a close game, but John and Dave L. nabbed the win.

3) John, Karen and Dave L. played a game of Kingdoms, with Karen getting the win.

BEWC Meeting Recap 5/21/11

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Attendees: Jason Bowen, Jeff Bowen, John Boyle, Michael Feinberg, Scott Harris, David Wilcox

Club Business:

We voted to purchase Mansions of Madness, Lost Cities, and Bang! Wild West Show.

Games Played:

1) John, Michael, and Scott played 7 Wonders. Michael and Scott tied with 57 points, but Scott had the tiebreaker of more money.

2) John, Michael, Scott, and David played Alien Frontiers which David brought and no one had played before. After some reading of the rules, we quickly got into it and had a lot of fun with the interesting die based ship assignment mechanism. Scott managed to play his sixth colony first, ending the game and putting him over the top in victory points for the win.

3,4) Jason, John, Michael, Scott, and David played two games of Bang! John won the first as the Renegade, and the second was a law win with John as the Sheriff and Michael as the Deputy.

5) Jason, Jeff, John, Michael, Scott, and David played 7 Wonders. John won this game, again with 57 points, with a ridiculous 45 of them coming from science.

BEWC Meeting Recap 4/16/11

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Attendees: Chad Willard, Lane Taylor, KC Deitrick, John Boyle, Alex Jordan, Kelly and Zachary Burnaby, Jeff, Jason, and Josh Bowen and their friend Raymond.

Club Business: None

Games Played:

1) Chad, Lane, KC, and John kicked off the day with a (mostly learning) game of the card game, Innovation. It was the first game for Chad, Lane, and John. Chad took a solid mid-game lead utilizing the strategic combo of Education and Perspective. However, once John took the lead in factories late-game he was able to amass a score of over 40, allowing a double achieve action to win with 5 victory points (only 4 were needed).

Lane had a solid Tech lead throughout the game, but wasn’t able to convert the advantage into victory points. KC (as the resident innovation expert) said this was a common frustration.

Overall, the game progressed slowly, but that’s to be considered when 3/4 of the players were new. I hope to play more of it in the future.

2) KC, Lane, and Chad fired up High Frontier.

Notes from KC:

Lane, Chad, and I played a session of High Frontier. Lane was NASA, Chad was Shimzu, and I was UN. We played full game with no head start.

After several rounds of auctioning and collecting rocket parts, all 3 of us launched rockets around the same time. I headed for Deimos, Chad to Ceres, and Lane to the Moon.

Lane claimed the moon, and eventually established an ET factory there and started producing some “S” product black cards, but had problems getting them into use (see below). Chad claimed Ceres, and a nearby asteroid, he eventually established an ET factory and colony on the asteroid. KC after unsuccessfully prospecting at Deimos, refueled and spent the rest of the game hopping around the asteroid belt prospecting about 4 M class objects, but all of them failed. We quit after about 3hrs play, with Chad at 12VP, Lane at 10VP, KC 0VP.

3,4) Next, John and Alex pulled out 7 Wonders since they both really enjoyed it at the last meeting and wanted to play again.

Kelly and Zachary arrived just prior to the 7 wonders game and after a hasty explanation of the rules, jumped in for some 4 player action.

Zachary maxed out (I think) the Gear Science cards (5 of them) leading him to a clear victory of 54 points. John, Kelly, and Alex, scored 39, 35, 34 respectively.

In the re-match, Alex won with 50 points, followed by John with 46, with Kelly and Zachary tied at 40.

5) The Quad then played Pirate’s Cove. Kelly took an early lead and didn’t look back, winning with 33 points. Zachary, Alex, and John scored 29, 26, and 24 respectively.

6) Meanwhile, Jeff and Jason arrived and played an incomplete game of Battlelore.

7) Josh and Raymond showed up afterwards and fired up a game of Arkham Horror and played several turns. After the Pirate’s Cove game above ended, they reset the game and started a new one with Josh, Jason, Raymond, and Zachary (with John staying a bit later than usual in an advisory role). The investigators were up against Yig and appeared to be holding their own (at least until 3:30 when John had to leave).

8) Chad, Alex, and Kelly pulled out Pandemic , which ended in tragic defeat. Only the yellow disease needed cured and Chad had the cure. It was, however, Alex’s turn. Fortunately, Alex played the Forecast card and rearranged the Infection deck to place Lima and Jakarta on the bottom. Those locations already had 3 cubes each and the team only had one outbreak left. Alex’s turn ended safely, but Kelly was faced with an impossible situation. He needed to clear a cube from both Lima and Jakarta, but just couldn’t make it work.

The trio played another game, but the results of that game are unknown.

Thanks to John and KC for the notes.

BEWC Meeting Recap 4/2/11

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Attendees: Josh Batolein, Serai Batolein, Jeff Bowen and family, John Boyle, Michael Feinberg, Ryan Frans, Lionel Galperin, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Dave Olson, Jay Olson

Club Business: None

Games Played:

1) John, Lionel, Michael, Dave L, and Karen played Ra. Lionel and Michael tied for victory points, but Michael had the tie-breaking highest value sun tiles.

2) Dave O and Jay played Carcassone: The Castle, where Dave crushed Jay, but apparently some creative application of the rules was involved.

3) Ryan, John, Jay, and Michael played High Frontiers. The game wasn’t finished due to time, but at the end Ryan was ahead on victory points and John was decently positioned to have a chance of overtaking him. Michael was way behind due to a number of catastrophic encounters with the radiation belts, which destroyed his entire rocket and crew on their way back from Deimos and crippled several attempts to get back there.

4) Dave L and Dave O played an epic game of Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, with Dave L’s Carthaginians victorious.

5) Karen and Lionel played Blokus.

6, 7) Jeff and family played Fortress America and Pandemic: On the Brink

8, 9) Jay, Josh B, and Michael played two rounds of Thurn and Taxis, where Michael won both games while Jay instead focused on creating the longest possible route, achieving 18 carriages [there are only 22 spaces on the board].

10) Jay, Josh B, and Michael played Citadels which Michael won.

11, 12) Dave O, Jay, Karen, and Serai played two round of Dominion, first Alchemy and then Seaside, with Dave winning both.

13) Dave L, Josh B, and Michael played a close game of Rheinländer that Dave won.

14) Dave L, Josh B, and Michael played Kingdoms, where it looked like Josh was winning, but a brutal third epoch knocked him back to third and Dave took the lead.