After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, September 5, 2013

I am back in Orange County so I went to my regular Thursday event this week at Paradise Perks.  After a two week absence (One week was when I was the Las Vegas, the other was going to the Comic Quest event) it was great to be back.

The event started a little late but it was great to see some familiar faces.  I was able to get updates from Railcon where among other things there was some excitement about the Ticket to Ride World Championships.

There were 20 -25 people in attendance at the Paradise Perks event with an average of 5 games being played at a time.

The only game I played at the event was Rialto.  Rialto is an area control game that uses set building to get things done.  The theme is that the players are powerful noble houses in Venice who are trying to exert their control over the city by owning and influencing things, like the Doge, money, buildings, bridges, gondolas, and councilmen.

The game take six turns and is set up in three phases.  The first phase the player collects the cards for his hand.  The second phase the player plays the cards from the hand they collected gaining additional power over the items they use their cards for.  The third phase the player activates victory point buildings.

The player gain victory points for the for having control of areas at the end of the game, in order to get control they need to place the most councilmen during each turn in the active area in the city.  If they do not add councilmen in the area during the turn it is active, they will not be able to go back to add them later in the game.

The players can also get victory points for buildings as well.  Each of the buildings has special powers based on when they can be activated in the game.  Building that can be activated in the hand creation phase add cards to a player’s draw and allows them to keep more cards in their hand going into the second phase.  Buildings that can be activated in the second phase affect cards.  Buildings in the third phase add victory points of Doge Influence.

I started out the game focused on gaining Doge influence.  I figured that got me the best options for getting the cards that I wanted in later turns.  I spent two turns pushing myself as far forward on the Doge Influence track as a could almost to the exclusion of everything else and the following two turns moving it forward slightly. This gave me control of the first player of the turn for five turns of the game.  I focused other efforts on building buildings during the second and third turn.  The fourth and fifth turn I actually placed councilmen on the board.  The sixth turn I focused on a major building effort to get victory point buildings and was able to active them for a number of victory points at the end the turn.  Most of my victory points in the end of the game came from buildings.  Unfortunately it did not propel me to victory.  I did manage to come in third after being in last place most of the game.

The rest of the evening was spent chatting with people about what was going on while I was gone, my impressions of the Las Vegas board gaming scene, and how conventions went for people.

My stats for the event were not a great start to the month, but are below:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Rialto	1	-	-	1	-	-			3.00
Totals	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	3.00

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ Comic Quest, July 27, 2013

Due to a scheduling conflict at the regular location, the Strategic & Adventure Game Association (SAGA) needed to find an alternative site for this event.  Fortunately Comic Quest a local comic book and game store allowed us to use their new game room.  It was fitting for the event to be there since their old store location was where SAGA started twelve years ago before moving to The El Toro Public Library.

There were 22 people in attendance at the event with 5 games being played at any given time.

I played two games during the event.

The first one was Corporate America, which was a new one for me.  The theme of Corporate America is the players are owners of corporations that are trying to manipulate the government and people of America in order to maximize their profits.  There are four phases in each turn:  The Wall Street phase where the players start business, the Main Street phase, where it is determined which types of businesses make money for that year, the Campaign Trail phase where a number of election issues are revealed and the players campaign against the other players to see who becomes president and the Capitol Hill phase where the new president then enacts the legislation they choose from the elections issues from the Campaign Trail phase.  The player with the most money at the end of the game wins.

I had a rough start in the game, which was completely brought on by my own ignorance of the game.  In choosing my initial businesses, I did not choose ones with any synergy, thinking that it was more important to have diversity in business sectors versus having businesses that were in the same sectors.  I did not realized how important getting the few extra dollars that having synergy would beat later points during the game.  I also managed to choose to do a pay out in a sector I did not own that turn because I had changed what I planned to put out as my initial business and was thinking I was giving myself a payout when I did not.  By the end of the first turn I was down to $10.

I spent the rest of the game trying to get out businesses out that had synergies with the businesses that I had already selected in order to recover the money I had blown in the first round in order to catch up with the leaders.  Unfortunately, I was not able to do it and I came in fourth out of five players.

The other game I played was Castle Dice, which I had played and won the first time I played it earlier this month, so I felt confident that I had a descent change of winning the game.

To review, 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 saved up resources.

This time when I played the game, I began to see more of the luck element involved in the game.  The buildable workers that I drew at the start of the game consisted one laborer, one guard and one merchant, which is not bad, but it was not all that great.  To make matters worse, I rolled two barbarians in my initial set of dice and had no soldiers to reroll them.  I played out my turn and was able to complete the worker, guard and take the lead in chickens with the resources I was able to get and took the resource hits that the barbarians inflicted on me.

I hoped that having the extra card that having the most chickens gave me would enable me to get more laborer cards quickly.  Unfortunately all I go was another merchant and a farmer, neither of which really help in getting additional resources especially since I rolled more barbarians in the second round as well.

After that I was able to get the soldier cards I needed to be able to reroll the barbarian dice in hopes of being able to rid myself of them and did not roll any more barbarians until the last two turns of the game so I had them clogging up my hand until then.  I struggled through the game and was only able to build any buildings worth points in the last two turn, but by that time the damage has been done.  I came in third out of three players.

It looks like my performance is turning against me again but it does not look like it will be enough to ruin the month for me.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Corporate America	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Castle Dice	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	2	-	-	1	1	-	-	-	3.50