BEWC Meeting Recap 7/21/12

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.