Tag Archives: Lords of Waterdeep

BEWC Meeting Recap 12/7/2013

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Attendees:Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Michael Feinberg. Alex Wright, Jim Halloran, Chris Cregan,  Alex Jordan, Ryan and Ronda Frans.

1)First off a game of Ticket to Ride: Europe – It was a frantic struggle for trains in the West at the start.  Mid game slowed down considerably and most everyone connected their routes with ease.  Karen, Alex and Michael took this opportunity to reach in for more destinations while Chris pushed on for some of the longer more lucrative train routes and ended up going out of trains.  Easily with longest route Chris ended with 130, Karen was incredibly close behind with 128, managing to reach all of her extra destinations.  Alex and Michael were less fortunate with their new destinations: Alex J 105 Michael 79.

2) Twilight Struggle Jim won over Alex W in the late era.

3) Terra Mystica: It was a close game, with mistakes made by everyone.  Michael managed to end in first with 115.  He took the dwarves and put their tunneling skills for great effect managing to connect all his cities and rival Alex for largest empire.  Chris played the alchemists and got bonuses for building dwellings and merchent houses and spent most of the game doing that and ended with 111.  Alex W also ended with 111 though would like it known that due to an oversight he should have won.  He played the swarmlings and built and built and built. Ryan picked up the cultists and despite being 1st in two different cult tracks only ended up 82.

4) Lords of Waterdeep was played with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion. Karen won with 112 followed by Alex W with 10, Ronda with 102.  Jim’s score was “not so good”.

5) Dominant Species Michael as the arachnids dominated 95% of the entire game.  On his arctic shelf fortress he nearly lapped the reptiles before the last round.  Chris as the Reptiles had an incredibly slow start, and his species was endangered by the 3rd turn.  Ryan as the Birds was everywhere, picking up similar eating habits as the reptiles they fought for control of the greener lands for most of the game.  Then the last turn happened.  The Reptiles in mass migration swarmed the arachnids in the tundra hoping to drive them off.  While most of the reptiles died out they took several of the spiders with them.  The Birds did similar to the green lands.  Scoring over 100 points in the last round Ryan managed to not only catch, but pass Michael with a 232 over 222 win. Chris was surprised to find himself only 40 points behind at 183.  Both Chris and Michael were not fully aware of how end game scoring worked and so this game may have gone much differently.

BEWC Meeting Recap 11/16/2013

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Attendees: Alex Jordan, Alex Wright, Bruce Clark, Dan Carey, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Victor Liu and Chris Cregan

1)Jim and Alex W. played a game of Twilight Struggle.  Jim as the Soviets came out the victor.

2) Chris, Victor, Alex J, Michael and Bruce played a round of Lords of Waterdeep with the new expansion Scoundrels of Skullport.  Chris came out in first with 178 points followed by Michael with 149, Alex at 145 Bruce at 143 and Victor with 132.

3) Chris, Victor, Alex J, Michael and Bruce then played a round of Citadels, substituting out the witch for the assassin.  Alex W. managed to end the game with 27 points followed closely by Victor with 25, Chris with 24 Alex J. at 17 and Michael with 16.

4) Jim and Dan played a round of A Distant Plain.  Jim played coalition and Dan played the Taliban, both players lost to the Afghani government.

5) Finally Chris Jim and Alex J played a game of Eclipse with the expansion.  Playing with ancient homeworlds all players found themselves fairly isolated for the majority of the game.  Adopting completely peaceful means no player against player combat occurred the entire game.  Michael won with a science heavy strategy, completely filling up his board with tech, and ended with 64 points.  Chris got 2nd with 56 due to a combination of high combat points from defeating ancients and a racial bonus for occupied orbitals.  Alex started completely surrounded by ancients and had his early fleet demolished in his first assault ending only at 12.

BEWC Meeting Recap 10/5/13

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Attendees:Dave Landon, Karen Landon, Alex Wright, Dan Carey, Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Chris Cregan,  Brandan James,Victor Liu, Robbie and Frank Fulton

1) Alex, Michael, Brandan and Dave started off with a game of Lords of Waterdeep.  Alex won with 125 points followed by Michael, Brandan and finally Dave who got 106, 103 and 80 respectfully.

2)Jim bought Warparty and played a game with Dan, Chris and Victor.  It was the first time playing and the instructions though simple were poorly worded leading to a learning game.  Jim and Chris playing as the Goblins and Undead ended up winning over Dan and Victor who played the Dwarves and Humans.  The forces of evil had defeated the Dwarves and were set up to take the stronghold but not in the 12 turn time limit and so all agreed evil won a partial victory.

3)Alex won his second game this time while playing Antike.  Robbie and Frank joined the original group playing Waterdeep.  Alex got 7 points followed by Michael with 6, Brandan, Frank and Dave all received 5 while Robbie ended with 2.

4)Karen joined the Antike group for a game of 7 Wonders.  It was an odd low scoring game.  Alex thought his streak was broken with 62 but it ended up highest.  Robbie and Brandan ended with 58, Mike and Dave 57.  Frank got 47 and Karen got 44.

5)Chris, Alex, Michael, Brandan, Karen, Dave played a large game of Robo Rally.  It was a particularly gruesome game with a robot dieing nearly every round as everyone scrambled for the 1 Flag.  A long corridor before the flag it made it so Robots were bumping into each other as one would be advancing towards while another try and move away from.  Chris managed to pull out of the tussle early and finished as most people were just getting flag one.  Michael was the only other Robot to reach the 2nd flag.

5)Finally Chris, Alex, Michael, Brandan, Karen, Dave played a couple games of BANG.  The first was quite short with Michael as the Sheriff quickly killing Chris as the Renegade.  Dave, Karen and Alex then finished off the Michael while Brandan the Deputy was unable to help. The Outlaws won.

6)The 2nd game of BANG took considerably longer.  Brandan as the Sheriff had a good set up character which made him nearly invincible till a string of bad draws.  Alex the Renegade quickly took out Chris this time an Outlaw.  Brandan managed to take down Dave the Outlaw but Alex took out Michael as the Deputy.  The game reached a stalemate between Alex, Karen and Brandan.  The Outlaws won again after Karen ended finished Brandan with considerable help from Alex.

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 2/2/13

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Attendees: Michael Feinberg, Jim Halloran, Frank Fulton, Robbie Fulton and Chris Cregan

Games Played:
1) Michael, Jim and Chris started with a game of Guild Hall, a new game Michael brought. Michael was the only one who had played before, but in the end turn order was more important. Chris won the game with 23 points with Michael in 2nd with 19 with Jim closing out at 16. Despite the scores it was incredibly close, with both Michael and Jim one turn away from getting over 20 points and thus winning the game.

2) Jim, Michael, Robbie Frank and Chris played the club’s new copy of Lords of Waterdeep. Jim with the City Guard jumped out to an early lead, buying up the first three buildings. These buildings gained him consistent victory points nearly every turn and a larger bonus from his Lords special bonus for buildings at the end. This allowed him to just edge out Chris’ Silverstars, who focused on high yield Piety and Magic heavy quests, 117 to 116. Robbie and her Knights of the Shield aimed at a diverse strategy of buildings and quests ending with 102. Michael’s Harpers finished a few plot quests early but unfortunately, wasn’t really able to capitalize on both of their special rewards and ended with 95 just edging out Frank who was hobbled by intrigue cards early in the game.

3) The meeting finished off with a round of the club’s Samurai Swords, which was formerly known as Shogun and is currently known as Ikusa.  Jim was the only one familiar with the game, which played similar to Risk if it were in feudal Japan except you can only have three large armies, each lead by a shogun.  Cards of the provinces were dealt out randomly and starting units placed.  Michael had control of the southern group of islands, with Jim just off the coast of those islands towards the eastern side of the map.  Chris and Frank were both far to the north, and Robbie directly in the middle of the map.  The early turns mostly consisted of players solidifying their starting locations.  Jim and Michael traded a few islands back and forth but no major battles happened until turn 3.  Frank took first turn and attacked Chris’ main force and ended up being defeated losing his Shogun.  Jim shifted focus and took out two of Robbie’s less defended Shoguns.  The next turn, Robbie lost her last general when Chris attacked with all three of his shoguns.  Robbie was removed from the game and Chris took control of both armies.  Despite the new territories he was in second place, with Michael having been content to gobble up the southern half of the island uncontested.  There wasn’t enough time to finish the game.  In the end Michael had the largest territory.  However, during the last turn, Michael had lost two of his Shoguns to Jim, his armies having been stretched thin.  Frank was also down to his last Shogun who had taken refuge in this well defended fortress.

BEWC Meeting Recap 11/03/12

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Attendees: Chris Cregan, Michael Feinberg, Steve Filice, Jim Halloran, Michael Kelly, Megan Sanders, Dave Olson, and Alex Wright

Club Business: None.

Games Played:
1) Michael F, Jim, and Dave started with a quick game of Tsuro, where Dave played a tile killing both Michael and himself, leaving Jim as the winner.

2) Michael F, Jim, Megan, and Dave played Take It Easy! When doing the math at the end, it looked like Michael had just edged out Dave 113 to 112, but Megan’s total came way over the top at 122.

3) Jim and Dave branched off to play Twilight Struggle, where in a long slog Dave was victorious as the USSR.

4) Michael F, Michael K, Megan, and Alex played Settlers of Catan with the Cities and Knights expansion. Mid-game Michael F and Michael K were fighting each other for the lead, but then they stagnated. Megan almost had the win when she got to 12 points and was only one resource short of building a settlement for her 13th point, but on Alex’s next turn he stole longest road from Michael K and added his own settlement for the win.

5,6) Chris and Steve played two rounds of Lost Cities, winning one each.

7) Chris, Michael F, Steve, Michael K, Megan, and Alex played a close game of Citadels. In the end Steve was the winner with 27 points over Alex at 24, closely followed by Chris and Megan at 23.

8) Chris, Dave, and Alex moved on to Mystery Express, where Alex was best at deduction, getting all aspects of the mystery correct.

9) Michael F, Michael K, and Megan played Lords of Waterdeep. Megan got off to an early lead with her quests, but Michael F managed to overtake her toward the end to win 131 to 133. Michael K ended up with the only lord in the deck who got bonus victory points for buildings rather than quests and found that it was a significant disadvantage.

10) Chris, Michael F, Michael K, Megan, Dave, and Alex finished up with Bang! Alex and Dave, both outlaws, fell first and then Michael F, the deputy was killed before he could he finish off the last outlaw, Megan. Once Chris, the renegade, killed her off it became a sheriff-renegade duel. Both Chris and Michael K had dynamite in front of them, but before either could go off Chris shot the sheriff for a renegade win.

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.