After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, July 11, 2013

Now that Anime Expo is over I am back to going to gaming events. 

There was a good sized crowed this week after the Fourth of July Holiday.  Thursday Night gaming had around 30 people attending and there were five games being played at any given time.

I played three games at this week’s event.  All of them were on the lighter side as far as time to play and all of them are easy to learn games that you could teach your family.

The first game was Biblios which I played the last time I attended Thursday Night Gaming.  To review, Biblios is a set taking game.  There are five suits of card that players are competing for the value of the suits in victory points are the same at the beginning of the game are equal at 3 points each, but can be changed upward or downward by specific cards during the course of the game.  There also cash cards in the game as well.

The game is played in two stages.  First is the donation stage where the players draw cards from the deck.  The number of cards is determined by the number of players plus one.  The player draws the cards one by one and disposes of them in the following manner.  One goes to their hand one goes to the Auction pile, and the others go to the table for the other players to choose from.

When the deck is exhausted the auction stage begins.  The cards in the deck that was being built during the donation phase are turned over one by one and auctioned off to the players using the money they got during the donation phase.  At the end of the auction phase the players then determine who has the highest value in the suits to get the points for that suit.  The one with the most points wins.

When I played the game this time, I had the opposite problem of the first time I played the game.  In the first round of the game I gathered cards from 2 suits and almost no money.  By the end of the round, I only had 3 coins.  During the auction I was able to get three more coins.  Other than that, I was only able to win one more card during the auction.  Unfortunately, it did not get me the majority in that suit.  With that I managed to come in last.

Next up was Castle Dice.  At first look Castle Dice looks like it is a kid’s game.  The artwork in the game is definitely aimed at a younger audience.  Surprisingly it is a much more interesting game than it appears.

Castle Dice combines worker placement with dice drafting.  The players are nobles that have been assigned to build outposts along the border of their kingdom to protect it from barbarian raids.  The player who does the best job, will become the heir to the throne.

Each round the players role a select number of dice and set aside any barbarians that they role for later use.  The dice are combined into a pool that the players then draft for resources to be able to build workers and the buildings of their outposts.  The players earn victory points from the building that they build.  At the end of the round any barbarians that the player rolled attack that player and steal save up resources.

I started the game by building up the number of different workers that I had and managed to collect chickens.  Chickens were important to me because they allowed me to keep a six card hand of items that I could build as long as I managed to have the most of them.  Since I was able to get good number of workers early on and with my extra card advantage because f my chickens (Just call me the chicken king of Irvine.), I was able to spend the second half of the game building the buildings to get victory points and won the game handily.

The last game of the evening was Fauna.  Fauna is an animal trivia game where the players select an animal from the deck of animals and need to put out markers on a board to show where they believe the animal’s habitat is, its size and weight.  If you place correctly you gain victory points, if you do not you lose markers to put out the next round.

It can devolve into a guessing game, but as long as you watch some Animal Planet or Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom as a kid, you will be able to make educated guesses.

I did well enough during the game.  I was ahead for most of it until the second to last round.  Where I messed up on some measurements of an animal (stupid hyena) and was not able to get enough markers out to keep my lead and wound up in second.

Overall it was a good evening as you will be able to see from my stats.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Biblios	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Castle Dice	1	1	-	-	-	-			1.00
Fauna	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Totals	3	1	1	-	1	-	-	-	2.33