Had another big game day yesterday with flashburn. Played seven games, lost all seven! My record is astonishing!
Ascension: Storm of Souls - This was laid out on the table when I got there. I don't really know what to think of Ascension. I've played it half a dozen times now (at least), and it just seems so random. I know there's some strategy involved (not that I'm the biggest strategist), but there's also a shitload of luck as to what cards come out. If you don't get some banishing (trashing) cards quick, you can get left behind pretty fast. We ended up playing twice, since there's a fair amount of setup, and of course, I lost both games.
Innovation - Been a while since I got this on the table, and I still absolutely adore this game. Even though it tends to be fairly chaotic, I love the multitude of choices and that every game is drastically different. I had a chance in the first game, but I wasn't thinking and did a dogma that ended up giving a good card I had to flashburn. He already had more achievements than me and ran away to victory on the first game. During the second game, I got off to an early lead, and then he got a demand card that allowed him to transfer a top-card with a castle from my board to his score pile. I really had no way to block, and my board quickly diminished to just two piles.
During the middle ages, I started to make a comeback and was scoring points at a rather rapid rate. However, he was gaining faster and I lost out yet again.
Dungeon Petz - This one is really interesting. It was the first time playing for both of us, so our first round or two took a little longer than normal. Once we got the rules down, we didn't really need to refer to the rulebook much at all, except for some artifacts that are unique. The game plays well and everything seems to make sense. That being said, that 60-90 minutes on the box is a goddamned lie! It could be that we both suffer from AP, but we easily took 2-2.5 hours (approx). The game is pretty brutal during the part where you have to do upkeep on your pet(z), and there would be a ton of swapping cards around to get the best combination between 2-3 pets. Pretty insane game, and will definitely play it again. Oh yeah, did I mention I lost?
Ora & Labora - Picked this up at CSI earlier this week and was really looking forward to playing it. Punched the boards on Thursday (not the best quality, had to use a boxknife) and read through the rules. Seemed easy enough. This game is absolutely fucking bonkers! Going from Agricola to this was a huge jump up in complexity. Not that the rules are hard or anything, but just comes down to the sheer amount of different resources you need to manage. The two player version is really odd, in that it doesn't really have an end condition. We were going over 2 hours (again, AP), and we didn't make it to their arbitrary end condition (one building left to buy), so we cut it off at the normal 3-4 player endgame. Flashburn thought I was stomping him the entire game since I got stone pretty early and had built a shitload more buildings than him. However, he had an extra plot/district that he built the castle and one other high-scoring building on and that ended up giving him the win.
Famiglia - It was getting kind of late and the other games we had out were going to take way too long. I suggested we play this one, as it had been a while. A nice quick little game that can get rather crazy swapping cards around near the end game. It was extremely close, and he ended up winning by getting the very last card in the game!
I think next week, we've got Civilization, (hopefully) LOTR:LCG, and who knows what else.
