Games Played: Clans, Apples to Apples, King's Breakfast, Metro, Magic
Gamers: Bob, Mary, Carl O., Sara, Chip, Bill, Charlie, John, Brendon, Nick, Justin, Carl
Ellis Technical School in Danielson, CT hosts a mini-gaming convention each year. This was the 15th year (and the first one I attended). Thanks to John Haskell for organizing this event.
http://www.cttech.org/ellis/student/simulation-club/main.htm
CLANS (0:25 + 0:10 rules)
Sara: 41
Chip: 38
Carl: 31
Mary: 29
Bob: 26
We played with an illegal number of players without any adverse affects (that I could see).
I tried to create a village each turn without paying much attention to my own villages. I did try to move my huts away from each other in a vague attempt to increase the chances that I would be involved in most of the villages. As some huts will remain singletons at the end of the game, this wasn't the best strategy.
I like this game for a number of reasons. It's quick, it's fun to move the huts around, it's fairly easy to explain to new players, and I haven't solved it yet.
APPLES TO APPLES (0:20)
Carl: 4 cards
Bill: 3 cards
eight other people: less cards
We were looking for a game for ten people, and Carl suggested Apples to Apples. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but there aren't that many games for that many people, and it was, thankfully, brief.
The game itself was moderately fun, but I think it's best with a group of friends that know each other well. As a social game, it falls a little flat with people that you've just met. Still, there are worse ways of spending 20 minutes.
KING'S BREAKFAST (0:17 + 0:08 rules)
Charlie:56
Carl: 55
Sara: 53
Josh: 52
Chip: 44
After Apples to Apples, we broke into smaller groups, and Sara and I opted to play King's Breakfast. We shuffled the 5 dragons into 5 more or less equal portions of the deck to make sure they didn't all come up at the same time.
I thought that the penalty for eating more then the king would be more severe (negative points a la Coloretto), so I played far too conservatively. I can't decide how important it is to remember what each player takes each turn. It does seem that card counting would be a good advantage, but this game may be friendly to those with poor memories.
I'd like to try this game a few more times, but my initial impressions of it are fairly positive.
METRO (0:21 + 0:05 rules/setup)
Chip: 51
Nick: 47
Charlie:29
John: 24
Brendon:24
Sara: 23
Charlie had suggested Metro a few times, so we agreed to give it a try. It's a tile-laying game in which players try to create long paths for their trains and short paths for their opponent's trains.
Following the paths for each train later in the game can get confusing, and you can accidentally help other players. Fortunately, each tile can only be played in a single orientation, so you don't have to consider all the possibilities that rotating the tile could generate.
Generally speaking, the trains that score later in the game will score more points. This makes it difficult to tell who is winning - in fact, the player that leads early in the game will probably lose later (as their trains score low points early on).
This is a fun game, and I'd like to try it again.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING (2:00 tournement)
Brenden:2 (duels)
Chip: 0
Defeated: Nick, Justin, Sara
Eliminated by Carl
We played a modified double-elimination Type 1.5 tournament. There were about 40 participants. Steve Maynard, from the Time Machine in CT, organized the tournament.
The players on the winner's half played the best of 3 matches, while those on the other track played only a single duel. Players that lose on the winner's track move to the other track. Players that lost on the other track were eliminated. There were prizes for the top 3 players.
I like this variation on double-elimination. I think it speeds things up a bit, while still giving players that second chance. Type 1.5 is an interesting format. I was initially worried that most players would have highly tuned and tested decks that consistently won by turn 4. I heard rumors of one such deck, but I didn't actually face it. Most of the decks I played against seemed like reasonable casual decks.
One of the advantages of playing a more restrictive format, for example, Block constructed, is that you will have an idea of what you may need to prepare for and defend against. For example, my deck relied on the threshold mechanic from a recent block. If my opponents had some anti-threshold cards (one which removed all cards from my graveyard, for example), they could have stopped my deck cold. As this was 1.5, however, I was able to "blind-side" my opponent with this mechanic. In general, it seems that the matches could just be determined by which player could blindside his or her opponent first. Fortunately, this wasn't really the case in this particular tournament.
My initial match was against a similar green deck with Armadillo Cloak and Rith, the Awakener. It was sort of close, but his deck was better. I played Nick next, with a blue deck that featured Seasinger (tap to take control of target creature, if its controller controls an island). I suggested that he might want to add some Sea's Claims and Phantasmal terrains into his deck to make it work more consistently.
I defeated Justin who had a black deck, and then was paired with Sara. I was able to defeat her Armadillo Cloak deck by overwhelming her with big creatures. Finally, I was defeated by Carl's Elfball deck.
posted by FlyingSheep @ 10:50 AM
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