November Game Night

A little slow reporting this one…

Splendid game night at our house last Wednesday. We had 10 players including Caleb and Logan who played a few games with us before going to bed.

Kieron brought Hey, That’s My Fish! and taught that to Bob, Caleb and Logan. Looks neat. Didn’t hear what happened but the mechanics are simple and it plays quickly. Nice little game.

Across the room, Jill played Yspahan (one of my Essen purchases) with Jeff, Christian and his son, Johann. Jill and I enjoy this game. Grouping and ordering the dice across the action board for players to choose from is an unusual use of dice and is a rather nice change. Jeff was a monster improvement builder early in the game and was able to boost his points to walk away with a substantial victory. The new players like the game. Again, the unusual use of dice and how quickly this one plays contributed to the positive comments.

24/7 received a couple of plays. I taught Troy. Caleb and Logan also joined in. Jill taught at the other table with everyone that played Yspahan. This plays well with 4 but I really like it with 2 or 3. With 2, you especially have a lot of freedom to set up scoring opportunities for yourself and block your opponent. Quick game and simple. Play a tile adjacent to a tile already on the board and draw a tile. Adjacent tiles in a straight line cannot add up to more than 24. Tiles that add up to exactly 24 or 7 score. Consecutive tiles (runs — 3, 4, 5, etc) score and groups of the same tile (sets — 3, 3, 3) score.

Troy, Bob, Kieron and I played Hermagor. Each turn of this game is composed of 2 phases. In the first phase, each player takes turns placing their buyers in the market. You work to create a majority of buyers adjacent to each goods tile you want to acquire. This can be as few as 1 or as many as 4. You also collect income when your buyers are in the alleys between tiles rather than being placed on top of tiles (placement on top of tiles break ties however). The more buyers you have in a straight line, the higher your income. After collecting goods and income, players move to the second phase, moving their agent around the board to sell goods and build a trade station in each city where a good is sold. The game is won by the player with the most cash in hand at the end of the game. This one’s a bit of a thinker with movement on the board that reminds one of Elfenland.

We also had a game of Chess, Cartagena and Citadels going on at one time during the evening. Great night. Thanks to everyone that participated!