After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, May 30, 2013

Yesterday was Thursday, so it must have been time for Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks!

There were 25 people in attendance at this week’s event.  A variety of games were played at 6 different tables at any given time.

I played 2 different games this time playing one of them twice.

The first game that I played was Trajan.  Trajan is a resource management game set in Imperial Rome.  The players try to maximize their victory points by taking actions which include gaining votes in the senate, building monuments, visiting the markets, shipping, building residences, and conquering distant lands.

The interesting feature of Trajan is how the actions are governed.  Each player has a roundel with six spots in it representing the six actions they may take.  At the beginning of the game, the players put two cubes in each position in the roundel.  In order to be able to do an action, the players take the cubes from one position in the roundel and start placing them clockwise, one at a time, into the positions on the roundel starting with the one to the left of the position that the player took the cubes from.  The position that the last cube is placed in is the action that is taken that turn.  The cubes stay in their new position until they are moved again.

The number of cubes that are moved in a turn also pass time in the game.  The more cubes that are moved, the faster the time marker moves around the time chart.  If you want to delay the ending of the round, you do actions that move fewer cubes.  If you want to end the round quickly, you move more cubes to do your actions.

I did well through most of the game picking up enough opportunity points during the game to keep up and at times be in the lead.  Unfortunately, I had what boiled down to no end game scoring strategy and it did not help that I was unclear on the end game requirements of the shipping action.  I came in fourth out of four.

The second and third game I played was La Boca.

La Boca is an abstract game in which the players team up with another player and solve a three dimension puzzle using a set of 10 different shaped blocks (11 blocks in the case of the advanced game.).

The players are shown a challenge card.  On each side of the card is a different pattern.  The players then use the blocks to build the pattern so that both players solve their pattern correctly in two minutes or less.  The players gain victory point for the amount of time they spend solving the puzzle.  The less time you spend the more points you get.

The game ends when each of the players has teamed up with all of the other players.  In the case of a three player game, the players team up with everyone twice.

I really enjoy abstract games like La Boca.  I generally do not do well at them but I really do enjoy them.  La Boca was no exception to this.

We played La Boca twice.  The first time with the basic set of 10 blocks and the second time adding the 11^th dreaded red L block to play the advanced game.

The results of both games were the same.  I came in last without actually cratering the game and had fun doing it.

Here are my results for this event.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Trajan	1	-	-	-	1				4.00
La Boca	2	-	-	2	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	3	-	-	2	1	-	-	-	3.33