GAMING: Wednesday Night at A-1 Comics (22 March 2006)!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday was a slow, but fun evening. The crew was a bit short as Dick was out on a business trip, but we made by. I found that I missed his "wise guy" demeanor.

The following were present:
- Dave Story
- Kimbo
- Kurt
- Maksim (me!)
- Mark Carper
- Mike O'Brien

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1. Battleground WWII

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20441

Kurt and Marc were already well entrenched in a game when I arrived around 5:00pm and I came over and observed a little while they were playing.

The Sides:
- Marc as WWII Germans: Stalemate
- Kurt as WWII Russians: Stalemate

It looked like they were playing an Eastern Front sort of scenario with a building- strewn battlefield remniscent of Stalingrad.

Mark's Germans came on the field with a Panther and a Panzer IV and accompanying infantry including several MG-34 teams. Kurt had a KV-2, a T-34 and a bushel or two of Russian riflemen.

Both started the game with a tank on each flank and infantry moving up through the ruins to take defensive positions. The first major breakthrough came when Kurt's T-34 destroyed Mark's Panzer IV and pushed himself forward. Mark was forced to move his Panther to the center and managed to brew the T-34 in return. And that pretty much left the guys in a stalemate. The infantry moved around and shot and killed each other, but noone managed to dominate the other. When I left the shop around 8:30pm, they were finishing a last turn and the point count was very close.

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2. Torres

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/88

Players:
- Dave: #2
- Kimbo: #3
- Maksim: #1 Winner

Dave, Kimbo and I pulled out Torres for a rematch from the last game we played. Kimbo was itching for blood... Kimbo went first and carved himself out a nice little corner of the kingdom, while Dave and I fought over another half of the board and possession of the king's favor on the first turn. At the end of the first turn, I managed to come out on top in the lead by a small margin. Turn two opened up in a clash of arms as Kimbo secured the king and Dave and I fought over each other's fortifications. And by turn three, things were getting ugly. Kimbo held onto the king, but was expending a lot of energy playing defensively. Dave acquired alot of cards that he couldn't use and I invested in building my tower higher and higher. And I won. I can't say I understand why, but it was an interesting little romp of a game.

It seems as if that is the winning strategy of the game: just keep building. It reminds me of the Winchester Mansion in San Jose. The Winchester widow used to say that: "Just keep building." It's a good ghost story. Check out the Winchester Mystery House story here:

http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

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3. Reef Encounter

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12962

And the last game of the night was Reef Encounter. Mike had arrived by then and had been curious to learn how to play. I was curious as well as Dave, Charlie and Kimbo have been playing an online version of the game for some time now. The game comes with a fantastic array of playing pieces including numerous "reef" boards, a playing turn counter, polyp tiles, trump tiles, algae chits and the beautiful, but funky shrimp pieces shown above in the photo on this entry (photo courtesy of BGG).

It didn't take long for Mike and I to feel utterly overwhelmed with the numerous rules of the game. The game has a very sophisticated action order and the sheer complication of it is intimidating. Dave mentioned that when he bought the game and they looked over the rules, he figured it would take two or three games to get the hang of it. He mentioned that new players usually get stomped, which is par for the course. It usually takes a few game to grasp the intricacies of such a game and figure out winning strategies. Part of the game's complication comes from the trump tiles which dictate which coral polyps can eat (dominate) others. This changes during the game, which makes for a vast array of factors to weigh in before taking one's turn.

Luckily, both Kimbo and dave each adopted one of us newbies, Mike and I, and helped us with our first few turns. The basic goal of the game is to build and eat reefs and shrimp for your fish. The difficulty comes in building the reefs over limited space while trying to keep encroaching players from taking bites off your reef. And eating only happens at the beginning of a turn so you have to have your "meal" properly arranged before you can dine, which means that after you set up a meal, every other player has a least one turn to try and disrupt your dining. Does it sound complicated? It was.

And in some kind of a weird disruption of the cosmos, I won that one too. It must have been my night.

Players:
- Dave: #2
- Kimbo: #3
- Maksim: #1 Winner
- Mike: #4

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Have a great Thursday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.