Tag Archives: Innovation

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 1/5/13

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Michael Kelly

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Michael and Michael started with Innovation. Things initially looked good for Michael K, who got the world and empire achievements early, but Michael F used pottery to obtain some early score for his first achievement and then mathematics to bootstrap up to the age 5 chemistry card. Once he had chemistry he was able to score a 6 and claim the next achievement each round. Michael K was able to slow him down for one turn, but it was a quick march to achievements 2 through 6 and the win.

2) They then moved on to a close fought game of Ticket To Ride: Europe. Despite the potentially wide open spaces on a two player map, they both ended up with similar tickets and fought for board position. The game ended with both being able to place all of their trains and tied for longest route, with Michael K being slightly ahead on points. Michael F had completed one more ticket though, and won 131 to 128.

3,4) While waiting to see if anyone else would arrive, they played two hands of Lost Cities. Michael F won the first and Michael K the second, but Michael K just edged out the total score, 96 to 93.

5,6) They finished up with two games of Flash Point: Fire Rescue. The first game went smoothly for them, easily clearing all 10 victims from the building, but for the second they played the variant with random specialist assignments and no crew changes. They ended up with the driver and the imaging technician, which was not a great combination. The driver was able to use the deck gun to keep most of the fire from spreading, but the imaging tech was not great at getting victims from the building. With five people rescued and one lost to the fire, a series of chain reaction explosions brought the building down on to them.

BEWC Meeting Recap 10/20/12

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Attendees: Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Michael Kelly, Chris Leitenberger, Chad Willard, Alex Wright, and Elaine Wright

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Chris C, Michael F, Jim, and Alex spent the bulk of the day playing Mage Knight. They played the blitz conquest scenario, which is supposed to be one of the shorter ones, but it was still 6 hours of play time. Everyone but Alex had only played once before, and the difference in experience was apparent mid-game when Alex started pulling well ahead and amassing the strength to single handedly take on cities and dragons. Chris was doing a pretty good job of keeping pace with Alex’s level growth and Michael had two strong turns with the right cards in his hand to take on adjacent enemies and catapult himself up two levels and from last place to second place. However Chris then ended up with a hand full of strong combat cards and no better options than to see what happened if he attacked Michael. The result was that neither of them got to use their turns to kill monsters and amass more fame, but Michael also accumulated seven wounds that cost him another turn to get rid of and were worth -17 fame at the end of game scoring. After the last night ended, only two of the four cities in the scenario were conquered, so technically all of the knights failed in their quest, but that doesn’t really impact the game’s outcome. Alex, as expected, ran away with the game at 125 fame, with Chris in second at 64.

2,3) Michael K and Chris L started a game of Tentacle Bento, but abandoned it with Michael well ahead when Chad joined them. The three of them played a second came that Chris won handsomely.

4) Michael K, Chris L, and Chad played Lords of Waterdeep, where Chad’s piety and commerce beat out Michael’s warfare and magic by three points for the win.

5) Michael K and Chad played a partial game of Innovation and were fairly close in both score and achievements when Chad had to leave.

6) Chris C, Michael F, and Michael K finished off the day with a quick game of Carcassonne. Almost the entire board ended up being one giant field with the two Michaels sharing the points for it. The 18 points from the field weren’t enough to help Michael F, but for Michael K it propelled him to a 78 point win over Chris’s 73.

BEWC Meeting Recap 7/21/12

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Attendees: Greg Chandra, Michael Feinberg, Frank Fulton, Robbie Fulton, Jim Halloran, Dave Olson, and Alex Wright

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Michael and Jim started with one round of Lost Cities that Jim one decisively.

2) Michael, Jim, and Dave tried out The Adventurers: Temple of Chac, which was a fun light diversion. Dave suffered at the hands of the temple, first falling into the lava and then after just barely avoiding going over the waterfall, his replacement explorer was mowed down by the boulder. Michael was well ahead and got took the safe road over the bridge and out of the temple first, but Jim did well collecting treasure in the river on his way out and ended up with a bigger haul and the win.

3) Michael, Frank, Robbie, Jim, and Dave played Shadows over Camelot, with Greg joining in about halfway through when he arrived. Shortly after that, Michael completed the Lancelot quest, but instead of the expected win (and 2 life point recovery), it was a tie, causing Michael to lose his last life point and be out of the game. Things didn’t go much better for the knights for the rest of the game, with catapaults building up and quests steadily being lost. Ultimately the forces of good lost and it was revealed that Greg was the traitor.

4) With Michael out of Shadows, he and Alex played Innovation. Alex got off to an early lead in score and achievements, but Michael was building a large tableau and was able to pick up most of the late age achievements, leaving them tied at 5 each. Both players were only missing one or two clock symbols to satisfy the empire achievement, but Alex got there first (on a draw and meld from Michael’s dogma effect) and he won the game.

5) Greg, Michael, Dave, and Alex played Ascending Empires where all of their flicking skills left a lot to be desired. Greg went early into orange tech, deploying his battleship and expanding deep into Alex’s quadrant. Michael went into grey tech, but spent most of the mid game fighting for grey planets into Alex and Dave’s quadrants and it was close to the end of the game before he managed to hold one long enough to build a research station and max out the tech tree. While Alex was set upon from two sides, Dave mostly stayed in his own quadrant and attempted a strategy of mining his planets for victory points. Ultimately Michael and Greg both tied with 28 VP (to Dave’s 21 for third), but Michael won the tiebreaker of developed 7 levels of tech while Greg had only developed 6.

6) Greg, Michael, Dave, and Alex finished off with Stone Age. At the end of the game Michael was leading in points on the board, helped by a 42 point 7 gold building buy, but Alex had been piling up the cards and handily won, 179 points to 136.

BEWC Meeting Recap 5/19/12

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Attendees: Greg Chandra, Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Frank Fulton, Robbie Fulton, Jim Halloran, Scott Harris, Michael Kelly, Alex Wright, and Elaine Wright

Club Business: We voted to purchase Eminent Domain.

Games Played:
1) Michael F, Jim, and Scott started off with Carcassonne with the Princess and the Dragon expansion. Scott and Michael dueled over a giant field covering most of the board, at one point with them both having three farmers in it (before the dragon started eating them) and both having cities that couldn’t be closed tying up their followers. The luck of tile draw (and dragon eating) went to Michael, and he got the field, catapulting him to a 120 point win, with Jim in a comfortable second place with 95. The expansion added some interesting options for strategy, but also added a lot more play time than expected.

2) While they were waiting for Carcassonne to finish up, Chris and Michael K played two rounds of Lost Cities, winning one each.

3) Greg, Chris, Michael F, Jim, Scott, and Michael K played A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. Michael F’s House Lannister got off to a strong start seizing and reinforcing several new strongholds, but then he fell to the bottom of the King’s Court track and was not able to muster any new troops, leaving Lannisport undefended against a surprise naval invation from Michael K’s Greyjoys. Meanwhile Chris’s House Stark was consolidating power over the entire north and Greg’s House Martell was taking advantage of a strong alliance with Jim’s House Tyrell to turn north into Scott’s Baratheon territory. The back and forth conflict over the rich territories of the reach captured everyone’s attention and the Stark’s were able to explode south on turn 7, just failing to capture the 7th fortress they needed for victory. Even with all of the other players uniting in support on the next turn, they were unable to stop the Stark’s from taking another fortress before they counterattacked, giving Chris the win. Greg was in second place, maintaining control over four fortresses.

4) Frank and Robbie played the Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon board game, winning their first adventure and getting half way through their second before the rec center closed.

5) Alex and Elaine played Innovation, where Alex felt bad about his win from a chain of Computers to Software to Globalization which gave an instant victory.

6) Alex and Elaine followed up with Galaxy Trucker, which Elaine came back to dominate, earning more than 50 points just from cargo in the third round for a 126 to 101 win.

7) Greg, Chris, Michael F, and Michael K finished up with a game of Pandemic. The rec center closed before they finished, but it seemed highly unlikely they could have won. Four of the five epidemics had come up, they were one away from the outbreak limit, and only black had been cured (but not sunset).

BEWC Meeting Recap 5/5/12

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Attendees: Greg Chandra, Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, and Michael Kelly

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Michael F, Jim, and Michael K started with 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. Michael F’s first leader was Tomyris, which deflects the -1 points from military losses to his opponents, which allowed him to ignore the military and concentrate on science. Combined with a few high value blue cards this led him to a comfortable victory with 66 points.

2) Chris, Michael F, Jim, and Michael K played Jim’s classic copy of Cosmic Encounter. Michael F got out to an early lead in colonies, using his torture ability to broker some good deals, but Chris soon caught up and an allied victory for their fifth colonies gave them a shared victory.

3) Greg, Chris, Michael F, Jim, and Michael K played Puerto Rico. Chris had the most experience with the game and seemed to be leading, but Michael F was racking up a lot of points near the end shipping sugar and corn, while Michael K had both small and large markets so was making great profits at the trading house and plowing them back into guilds. The VP from his buildings allowed Michael K to edge out Michael F, 42 to 40.

4) After lunch, Greg, Chris, Michael F, and Michael K played Innovation. Chris quickly acquired a strong tableau, a special achievement, and a lot of score, but it was his first time playing and a misunderstanding of the rules causes him to miss picking up some regular achievements that were then taken by Michael K and Michael F. This kept Chris from having an early win and settled the game down to a fairly even match. Both Greg and Michael F racked up high scores and looked to be able to snag some of the last achievements, but Michael K dogma’d fission and everyone was nuked back to the stone age with only three cards below age 8 left in the game. Michael F drew and melded the age 1 card ‘Oars’ which gave him a scoring opportunity and when the game ended three rounds later with all of the age 10 cards drawn, the score from oars gave him the victory.

5) Greg, Chris, Michael F, and Michael K finished up with a quick game of Munchkin. Some lucky monster encounters and treasurer draws had Michael F quickly gain levels and while he was beat back down a little, some helpful allies and generosity with the treasurer quickly got him to level nine. To gain the 10th (winning) level in Munchkin, you need to win a combat, with one exception – the divine intervention card causes all clerics to gain a level and that level can be the winning one. Michael was a cleric and on his next turn, kicking down the door revealed the divine intervention card. In addition to winning, the text on the card gave him permission to mock the other players mercilessly.

BEWC Meeting Recap 4/21/12

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Attendees: John Boyle, Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Frank Fulton, Robbie Fulton, Lionel Galperin, Jim Halloran, Michael Kelly, Dave Olson, and Jay Olson

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Chris, Michael F, Frank, Robbie, and Jim played Lungarno, which Chris taught to the rest. Both Michael and Jim concentrated on a strategy of Tower Houses and Plazas that gave end game points and which payed off for both of them, with Michael just edging out Jim for the win, 30 to 28.

2) When more people showed up, the proposed game of 7 Wonders was abandoned, and Chris, Michael F, Frank, Robbie, and Jim sat down to A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. Alliances were loose and shifting, with a great deal of squabbling in the north between Robbie’s House Stark and Jim’s House Greyjoy, while Michael’s Baratheon forces expanded in the center of the board. In a 5-player game, House Martell’s territory is neutral and their fortress’s are relatively weakly guarded; giving an advantage to House Baratheon and House Tyrell (Frank) who have easy pickings on their borders. After fortuitous supply and muster Westeros cards, Michael was well positioned to strike out for the Martell fortresses and was poised to win in Round 5, but Frank’s forces in south and Chris’s Lannister forces rushing across the Reach were able to beat him back. With Michael having lost the rich supply of blackwater, another supply Westeros card would have decimated his forces leaving Chris well staged to steal the win, but one did not come up. Careful spending of influence combined with the Baratheon’s control of the Iron Throne’s tie breaking ability allowed Michael to position himself near the top of all of the influence tracks and stage an unbeatable force to seize his seventh (winning) fortress at the beginning of Round 7.

3) John, Lionel, and Michael K broke off to play Innovation, where Michael used the dogma effects of mapmaking and montheism to rack up score and take all but 1 of the early achievements for a quick win.

4,5) Dave and Jay played two rounds of Lost Cities, winning one each.

6) Dave and Jay started a game of Unidentified Walking Objects, but Dave surrendered his poorer position so they could go join another game.

7) Lionel, Michael K, Dave, and Jay played Outpost, where Jay was victorious.

8) Chris, Michael F, Robbie, and Jim finished up with a game of Munchkin. Michael and Chris jumped out ahead when Michael used his Kneepads of Allure to force him to help with a level 12 monster. Once it was cursed up to 17 and then doubled with mate, Chris renegotiated the deal so that he could charm one of the monsters and they both raked in the treasure. Another round brought both of them to level 9, but Chris drew an easy combat on his next turn and no one had any curses left, giving him the win.

9) Michael K, Dave, and Jay ran out of time to finish their game of Power Grid Japan, getting just about to the end with it still being anyone’s game. When they stopped, Dave was able to power the most cities, while Michael had the turn order position to expand the most, but only if he got lucky in the power plant market.

BEWC Meeting Recap 1/7/12

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Attendees: Dan Carey, Karen Deitrick, KC Deitrick, Tom Dunford, Michael Feinberg, Linda Galperin, Lionel Galperin, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Alex Wright, Elaine Wright, Shawn Yoon

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Dan, Tom, Michael F, Joe, Michael K, Dave, and Karen L started with a full 7 player game of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. Joe took advantage of his Babylon wonder to acquire 3 full sets of science cards and then Aristotle’s bonus to get 3 extra points per set for a whopping 57 science related points and 70 total points, just edging out Dan’s 69 points (fairly evenly split between blue cards, military, and wonder points.)

2) Dan, Tom, Michael F, Michael K, Dave played Mare Nostrum. The game was fairly balanced but minor border skirmishes between everyone except Dave’s Roman empire kept everyone distracted with the military side of the game. Michael F’s Carthaginians had just managed to acquire the first of three wonders/leaders needed to win the game when Dave’s massed armies swept in, stealing a rich province before it could be reinforced. Those additional resources gave Dave the Director of Commerce title and allowed him to steer the trading phase so he could acquire all 12 unique resources and built the pyramids winning the game.

3) Lionel, Joe, Alex, Elaine, and Shawn played Kingsburg with the To Forge a Realm expansion. Alex just edged out Joe for the victory, winning by 3VP.

4) Karen D, KC, Linda, and Karen L played Galaxy Trucker where Karen L ran away with the win.

5,6) Linda, Lionel, Dave, Karen L, Elaine, and Shawn played two rounds of Ca$h ‘n Gun$, with Linda and Lionel winning one each.

7) Michael F, Joe, Michael K, and Alex played Innovation using the Echoes of the Past expansion for the first time. The game settled down into a fairly balanced game with Michael F, Joe, and Michael K all acquiring 3 of the 5 necessary achievements and Alex having just caught up with 2 when Joe dogma’d Fission and a red card was revealed destroying the world and removing all of the accumulated score, tableau, and hand cards from the game. With most of the low age cards eliminated, we rebuilt from the ground up, drawing and melding trying to work back up to the largely untouched age 9 and 10 decks. Joe managed a few combinations to accumulate a decent score and likely would have one if the game ended from exhausting the age 10 deck, when Alex comboed stem cells and bioengineering to leave him with the most leaf icons and satisfy bioengineering’s special win condition.

8) While the game of Innovation rebuilt from the stone age, Dave and Shawn finished up with a game of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Shawn controlling the forces of Mordor managed to wipe out almost all of Dave’s fellowship, but Sam sacrificed himself to the cave troll, allowing Frodo to sneak past and make it to Mordor and win the game for Dave.

BEWC Meeting Recap 12/17/11

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Attendees: KC Deitrick, Michael Feinberg, Ryan Frans, Lionel Galperin, Scott Harris, Joe Kauffman, Michael Kelly, Dave Olson, Jay Olson, Alex Wright, Elaine Wright

Club Business: We voted to purchase copies of Mystery Express and Samurai Swords (recently republished as Ikusa) that Dave Olson picked up cheap. We also voted to order Ascending Empires and Lionel donated a copy of Duel of Giants to the club.

Games Played:

1) Michael F, Dave, and Jay started with a game of Martian Flux, but stopped once Starcraft was set up.

2) Michael F, Scott, Ryan, Joe, Dave, and Jay played an epic 5.5 hour game of Starcraft with the Brood War expansion. It was a very well laid out map with a lot of interaction between all of the players. The game culminated in a sprawling last turn with many changes of fortune and almost everyone having a shot at victory. With it fairly clear that this would be the last turn, everyone raced to satisfy a victory condition. Scott as the Overmind had just managed to satisfy his special victory condition, building a 4th base, right before his 3rd was destroyed, bringing him back to the three he needed. Dave as Jim Raynor also just managed to satisfy his special victory condition, as his one lone marine managed to survive against a vastly superior Zerg force and hold on to his sixth resource producing territory. Dave had an extremely depleted combat deck, so drew randomly from the top of the pile and managed to come up with the one card in the entire deck that had sufficient defense for his marine to survive. Leading up to the end, Jay as Arcturus Mensk had been reasonably set up to satisfy his special victory condition, but then Michael as Aldaris sent a huge invasion fleet to one of his planets, while the other became the most contested territory in the galaxy as every player but Michael issued orders on it try and claim its two conquest points. Joe as Queen of Blades and Ryan as Tassadar managed to split those conquest point territories, and so were going to be tied with 16 points, satisfying the regular victory condition and having to go to a tiebreaker. However, stage III had been triggered, so everyone had an opportunity to play a leadership card and upset the game dynamics. Michael chose to not play the card that would have blocked checking regular and special victory conditions this round, since it was nearly impossible for him to catch up on conquest points with only one more round and the game would likely be forced to end anyway by the End Draws Near Cards, considering how many event cards were drawn last round. Ryan had a card that he thought would cost Joe one conquest point and give him the win, but a last minute attack on his forces caused the card to also lose him a conquest point, keeping them tied at 15. Scott’s leadership card secured his special victory condition, since it allowed him to build another base. The final leadership card however was Dave’s and he played To The Bitter End, causing all other players to loose two conquest points, pushing Ryan and Joe below the threshold for regular victory, which then allowed special victory conditions to be checked for. That final card gave him the win, as Dave and Scott were the only players satisfying special victory conditions and in the tie breaker of most conquest points, Dave easily beat out Scott’s zero.

3) KC and Michael K played Race for the Galaxy, where Michael just edged out KC, 37 to 36.

4) KC, Lionel, and Michael K played Merchants & Marauders, but didn’t finish the game before Lionel had to leave.

5, 6, 7, 8) Alex and Elaine had their timing off from everyone else’s games, so got in two player games of Lost Cities, Innovation, Ticket to Ride: Europe, and Kingsburg. Alex won the two rounds of Lost Cities, but Elaine was victory in Innovation and Ticket to Ride, not sure who won Kingsburg.

9) Michael F, Joe, and Michael K played a remarkably quick game of Settlers of Catan. Joe got stalled at 9 VP and it seemed like the tide might have been turned when Michael F stole longest road, but Joe was able to take the title back and then bought the first development card of the game, which turned out to be a 1 VP card, giving him the win.

10) Ryan, Dave, and Jay played Thunderstone, which Ryan won.

11) Michael F and Michael K played Innovation. Michael K managed to scoop up almost all of the low point achievements and had built an impressive tableau, but mid-game Michael F got into a rhythm with the Pottery dogma, allowing him to score 5 more points and achieve every turn. With all of the regular achievements taken, it turned into a race for the special achievements. Michael K was able to claim Wonder using Invention, though he also simultaneously satisfied it’s five colors splayed right requirement, and was only a turn or two away from claiming Monument or Empire, either of which would have given him the win, but Michael F finally drew a blue level 6 card, which when melded allowed him to dogma Astronomy and claim the Universe achievement for his sixth achievement and the win.

12, 13) Ryan, Dave, and Jay played two hands of the three-player variant of Bang! which has just the deputy, renegade, and outlaw and no hidden roles. Ryan won both games as the deputy.

BEWC Meeting Recap 10/15/11

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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.