After Action Report: Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks 4/18/2013

I am a frequent attendee at a game night event that is hosted by a coffee house called Paradise Perks in Irvine, CA every Thursday night,  7pm - Close. 

This week there were between 20 and 25 people that attended throughout the night with three to five tables active at any given time.  The games that are played ranged from the lighter introductory games such as Ticket to Ride to the more complex gamers games like Agricola.

The attendees are a nice group of people and are accepting of any new attendees that show up.  There is one group of players that is the exception this.  They appear to be a group of friends that get together all the time to play games at open game events as a group and do not really interact with the rest of the players.  That can be off putting to a new player but if you just ignore them and focus on the other players you can have a good time.

I was able to play two games at the Thursday night. 

The first game that I played is a dice game called Qwixx.  It is a dice rolling game that two to five players can play.  The game consist of six six-sided dice, two white and one each of red, yellow, green and blue and score sheets.  The players take turns rolling the dice.  The active player selects one of the colored dice and one of the white dice and marks off the number on score sheet in the color of the match pair of dice.  In the mean time the inactive players may opt to take the total rolled from the pair of white dice that are rolled and mark that number off on the color of their choice.  The game ends when two colors are locked and the score is then determined. 

I did horribly at this game because I did not take advantage enough of the inactive dice rolls that came up figuring that the next dice roll would fit better into my plan.  I came in fourth out of five players.

The second game that I played was Yedo.  Yedo is a strategy game that uses auction and worker placement to be able to gain money and power so you can complete missions to be able to get more money and amass prestige (victory) points.

The players take the roles of clan leaders in the city of Edo during the Tokugawa Shogunate and try to gain the most prestige by the end of the game which is 11 turns or less if one of the players completes a specific mission earlier than turn 11.  It is important to continually find ways to complete missions in the game as it is the only way to get enough money to be able to go the things that you need to do to win the game.  If you do not do this, money will be very tight.

I did well on this game so that I was able to have the money that I needed to get me through the end of the game.  The only problem I had was not being able to get additional mission card in turn 8 or 9 to complete by the end of the game.  Even then I was able to pull second place out of five players.

I ended my evening with Yedo and took my leave.  Here is my scorecard for the week.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Qwixx	1	-	-	-	1	-			4
Yedo	1	-	1	-	-	-			2
Totals	2	-	1	-	1	-	-	-	3