Harrowed Halls

This week during games we traveled back to the Stone Age. Evil Mike says I should know a lot about it since I was alive back then. Normally I would throw down the gauntlet and say something like “Let’s just see who wins this Stone Age!” It turns out that Mike was wrong; I really don’t know much about the Stone Age. Mike beat us by a substantial margin. But I get ahead of myself. Let’s talk a little about the game.

At first glance you might think Stone Age is just another resource management game: gather wood and bricks and use them to build the things you need. But it’s really more about managing your tribe and using each member to their best potential for scoring victory points. Each round you must make a decision where to place your tribe members. Will they be hunters, collectors, farmers, or tool makers? Some areas have a limit to the number of tribe members that you can place in them, so you almost never get to place them everywhere you want to. Add to that an ever changing set of huts and cards that produce victory points and give you extra resources–so each round to presents a new set of options. Oh, and at the end of each round you have to feed your tribe. If you don’t, you can lose a lot of victory points.

There are many strategies for getting victory points. This is one of the factors that makes the game fun to play. Also, you really don’t know how well you are doing until the end of the game when the points are tallied up. In our game, Mike was the clear leader by about 30 points, while only 4 points separated the rest of us. We all thought Ben was doing really well, and he end up in last place.

I’m sure we’ll be playing more of Stone Age.

We played a new game this time called Ghost Stories. It’s a 4-player cooperative game where the band of players is trying to stave off ghostly forces bent on haunting the nine villages of the game board. I’ll start off by saying this is the best cooperative game I have ever played. During the setup you get to choose one of the four levels of difficulty: Initiative, Normal, Darn Us to Heck, and the Hell level. (I can’t remember the real name of the third level, but you get the idea.) Being new to the game, we choose to start at the easiest level. That means we would have one big bad incarnation to kill during the game. To win the game, the players must kill all of the incarnations. In the higher levels of difficulty there can be more incarnations. We lose if four villages become haunted.

Each player has a specific power to aid the players in holding back the ghosts from the villages. Each of the nine villages also help the players in various ways. Reading through the rules, the players have lots of options and powers at their disposal. It sounded like a cake walk. Boy was I wrong. In our first game we lost even before the incarnation came out on to the board—overwhelmed by ghosts. We noted several errors we made along the path to disaster and vowed our second game would go much better.

The second game did go better, but it was touch and go for the last half of the game. The board filled up early with ghosts and we were sorely pressed to keep up with them. Once the incarnation did come out, we had a solid plan…that failed and failed and failed, until finally Owen was able to overcome it. I was dead by then. Possibly Mike too. Had Owen failed on his turn we would have lost the game. That’s how close it was. And this was the EASIEST level! Needless to say, we’ll be playing this game again. Until then we’ll wonder how the heck anyone survives the normal level of play.

It’s the holidays! And because it’s the holidays, I get to play a lot more games! And because I’m lazy, they are all condensed in this one blog. First off let’s talk about Monday (12/29). It was just Mike and I and we played two games: The Settlers of Catan card game and Battlelore. In the Settlers card game Mike squashed me like a bug. It seemed like everything went his way, while all the bad things happened to me. Ah, but then we played Battlelore. Mike squashed me like a bug again. In the end, he had all six victory points needed to win and I had ZERO. Dismal. 

Tuesday I got an opportunity for a rematch on the Catan card game. This time we added the Wizards and Dragons expansion set. The game started out just the opposite of Monday’s game—everything was going my way and Mike was getting all of the bad news. Unfortunately Mike was not about to give up. In the end, I couldn’t get any buildings that scored victory points and Mike managed to get the 13 needed to win. 

New Year s Day we had a game day at Mike’s with Owen, Mike and I playing a couple games. (Ben was still in Australia.) First off we played Twilight Imperium III—one of our favorites. I have the distinct honor of being the only player I know to ever not earn a single victory point during a game of TI3. This was to be a completely different game though. Early on Mike took Mekatol Rex (not sure of the spelling) and he and I were neck and neck for victory points. Owen was a little slow out of the gate. Owen tried to dislodge Mike from Mekatol Rex with heavy losses to both. In the meantime I was able to maneuver quite a coo by taking over Mike’s home planet—this was exactly what I needed to pull ahead and win the game. Woo Hoo! (I don’t win this game very often.) I must say that Mike’s game was a little off. He allowed some things to happen that normally wouldn’t slip by him. 

Next we played another favorite, Samurai Swords (originally Shogun.) In a 3-player game, setup is key. You don’t want to be in between the other two players. That’s where I ended up. Owen was strong on the right and Mike had a good foot-hold on the left. Mike and my armies were also mixing it up a bit in the center too. As the game progressed, Mike attacked one of my armies with two of his own. My only advantage was that both attacks were across water, so I got a free first attack. That went ok, but what sealed Mike’s fate was his lousy luck with the dice, while my archers were hitting every round. In the end, he did destroy my army, but one of his armies was destroyed too. The other was left with only the Daimyo (general)—no troops. In the meantime, Owen was becoming stronger and stronger on the right. So it would seem that it was Mike and I against Owen. But any opportunity arose where I could take out Mike’s weakened army AND I was in a position to get to his last army before Owen. I saw this as my best way to win. On the next turn after taking out Mike’s second army, Owen got to look at my planning. He also, smartly, chose the ninja. When I attacked Mike’s final army, he was going to attempt to assassinate my daimyo and stop me in my tracks–the odds where in his favor. He only had to roll a 1-8 on a d12 to succeed. Fortunately my luck held. He failed in the assassination attempt. I even got to kill one of his daimyos. My battle against Mike’s last army went well and afterwards I owned enough of the board to win the game! I rarely win two big games like this, so it was a great day for me. 

One last note. Mike got us all t-shirts from despair.com. Mine reads: Don’t be afraid. I’m right behind you—using you as a shield. I think that’s how Mike felt in both of Thursday’s games. But I’m sure my luck as faded by now, and next Monday I’ll be back to my usual self.