Tuesday's Game Night

Great turnout this week. We had a lot of people and there were usually three or more games going at once.

First up for me was the new Days of Wonder release: Battlelore. Battlelore is based on the same card driven system as Memoir '44 and Command & Colors Ancients but it has tons more pieces, adds quite a few rules and is designed from the start to be an expandable system. Adam and I played one of the lore scenarios. Actually we played it twice, switching sides. While Adam seemed to have a much rougher go of it than I did, the scores ended up being the same so I guess we tied. The game is absolutely beautiful and it's a lot of fun but I must say that the goblinoids are almost worthless. My one real complaint with Battlelore is that the rulebook is unnecessarily long. It's a huge bound softcover book filled with illustrations and examples, which is a good thing, but it's also very long winded. These rules are nearly so complicated as the rulebook makes them seem. Furthermore, instead of providing a simple quick reference sheet containing all of the essential rules, they opted to provide a handful of summary cards (just like Memoir '44) which means that you have to spread out nearly a dozen cards to have the same information as could have easily fit on a single sheet of paper. (I'm considering creating my own quick reference card. If I do I'll post it here.)

Next up for me was a quick game of Tichu. I can't remember who won or even who was involved. That's what I get for waiting so long to do this writeup.

My last game of the night was another game of Doppelkopf with Kai, Adam and Oren. I'm beginning to think that eventually I might get almost decent at this game. The feel for how to play a given hand still eludes me but I think I'm getting closer. It's a very good game but there are far too many seemingly arbitrary rules for me to recommend it to most people. I didn't lose. I consider that an accomplishment.

Other games I saw played Tuesday night include: Bluff (Liar's Dice), End of the Triumvirate, Drakon, Nexus Ops, Havoc, Perikles and Yspahan.

If you'd like to join us, we meet every Tuesday night at 5:00 in Microsoft's building 50 cafeteria. Feel free to arrive late (many do). We're usually there until 11 or 12. We'd love to see you there!