Game Night

Lets just jump right into the games.

As an opener, Oren and I teamed up against Darryl and Mike K. in a game of Polarity. Polarity is a really unique abstract strategy/dexterity game where players take turns placing magnetic pieces on a canvas playing field. The trick is that each piece must be placed so that it is partially suspended above the board by its magnetic field. Disturb the pieces and you'll be losing points. It's eerie fun with science. Oren and I won pretty handily.

By that time we had seven people in attendance and so we split into two groups. Oren, Jose and I played Caylus. We had a good game which Oren easily won. I came in a respectable second.

The other four: Mike K., Adam, Birch, and Darryl played Il Principe. I believe that Mike won that one. Il Principe takes a little auction, some area control, some set collecting, and some production and blends them all together to produce an interesting mix. It's a fun game that grows on me the more I play it.

We both finished at about the same time so we mixed the players up.

Darryl, Jose, Oren and Birch played Hey! That's My Fish! This is that fun abstract strategy game I've mentioned before where players move their penguins from ice floe to ice floe collecting fish. Quick, easy and fun.

Mike K., Adam, and I played Razzia (the card game version of Ra, currently only available as an import). I actually like Razzia a little better than Ra just for the size factor but they're almost identical games. I didn't do well tonight.

Mike K., Adam, and I next played St. Petersburg. This is a very good production game with some brutal economic decisions. Early in the game you really have to concentrate on generating income but at some point in the middle you need to leave off concentrating on income and focus on building victory points. For the first time in a very long time I managed to achieve a convincing victory. Usually when I play St. Petersburg I do rather poorly. Maybe I'm finally getting better. Or perhaps I just got lucky.

Darryl had to leave early and so Oren, Birch, and Jose next played Nexus Ops. This is a very good objective based combat game that kind of feels like a lighter (and much shorter) version of Twilight Imperium. It's also about as geeky as games come. The pieces are clear day-glow colored plastic bugs and those of us playing St. Petersburg busted out laughing more than once at overhearing such phrases as "I'm a Crystaline Killer!" Good fun.

After St. Petersburg I was getting pretty tired so I decide to head for home. As I was leaving Mike and Adam were starting up a game of Dungeon Twister. This is as exceptional two player game (although multiplayer expansions are coming) that has some chess-like elements and some combat elements similar to Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation, all wrapped up in a nice fantasy theme.