After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, June 13, 2013

Thursday Night Gaming drew 19 people this week with games being played at four tables.  Attendance was still a little light compared to what it has been.  I think it is due to finals and prep for graduation still going on at the local university.

After a bit of milling about because no one would make a decision on which games to play, three of us decided to play The Castles of Burgundy.

The Castles of Burgundy is a territory development game that plays 2 – 4 players.  The players start with a hexagonal play space where each side of the hex has six small hexes on it and the play space is filled with hexes as well.  The hexes are divided into six different terrain types that are grouped together into different regions of the same terrain type.  While there are player boards where the regions are set up exactly the same, we played with boards that had varied layouts.

Players develop their territory rolling a pair of dice and using the results of each die to select improvements from options on the board.  There are ways to modify the results of the roll so the random element does not prevent the player from doing something that can help them improve their position.

I managed to win this game by focusing completing regions, shipping goods consistently through the game.  I was able to do this by maintaining the first player spot for the majority of the game so I could get first choice on improvements as they came out.  It was a really close came, but I won it through pick up the end game scoring tiles that focused on bonus points for shipping.

After a short break, I then got into a game of Nefertiti.

Nefertiti is a tough game to describe, but I guess the best thing to call it is an auction game.  Players are councilors in the court of Akhenaton who need to get gifts for his wedding anniversary to Nefertiti.  There are four markets, of which only three are open at any given time in the game, that carry the gifts the players need to collect in order to get points in the game.  Gifts are more valuable the fewer players that are collecting them and will score more points at the end of the game.

I came in last in this game.  I spent too much time focused on getting one type of gift instead of building up a variety of different gifts.  It would have gotten me fewer points, but it would have denied the other players points as well.

The results for this evening were as follows:

 

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
The Castles of Burgundy	1	1	-	-	-				1.00
Nefertiti	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	2	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	2.00