I attended the Board Game Night at Comic Quest on
Thursday. Attendance was light this
time. I believe that it had a lot to do
with it being the first day back to school for most of the kids in the area as
well as it being the first night for NFL football on Thursdays. There were 17 people at the event with four
games being played at any one time.
I played three games at the event.
The first game was Lost Cities: The Board Game. In Lost Cities: The Board Game the players are trying to
complete archeological expeditions. The
farther along on an expedition track a player gets, the more points they
score. The player must be careful when
starting an expedition because if they do not move at least four spaces on that
track they will lose points.
The players move along the track by playing out cards in the
color of the expedition in front of them in ascending order. The deck of cards has five colors. Each color has two cards ranging from 0 to
10. When a player plays a card in front
of them it cannot be lower than the last card they played in that color. Each time the player places a card in front
of them they move their explorer up the expedition track. As an alternative they players may discard a
card that can be picked up later may other players instead of drawing from the
deck.
The round ends when 5 player tokens are moved 7 or more
spaces up the expedition track or when the deck of cards is depleted.
On each expedition track there are bonus tokens available
that give out extra points, allow the player to move an extra space up the
track, or give the player a monument.
The monuments are worth additional points at the end of the game.
I had a pretty bad run throughout the game. At the beginning of every round the cards
that I had did not give me clear direction as to which expeditions to
start. As a result I delayed starting my
expeditions too much which did not give me a chance to get the idols I needed
for end of game scoring. I ended the
game in third place out of four players.
The next game I played was Ticket to Ride. The theme of the game is that the players are
owners of train companies that are building rail lines in the United
States. The goal is to establish routes
between the cities on the tickets that the players receive. If the players connect the cities on a ticket
they will receive bonus points at the end of the game based on the value on the
ticket. If they do not connect the
cities on one of their tickets the player loses the number of points on the
ticket. Points are also scored for
placing trains between two cities on the board more trains needed the more
points are scored.
Game play is simple.
The players start out the game with three tickets that have destinations
that they can connect of which they must keep at least two. They will also receive four train cards. An
additional five train cards are placed face up by the side of the board along
with draw decks of train cards and tickets
The train cards are the core of the game. They come in eight different colors and there
is a ninth card type which is a wild card and can be used as any color. These train cards are what are used to make
the connections between the cities. Each
connection is represented by a number of spaces that are a single color. If a player wished to claim a connection
between two cities they must turn in the number of cards of that color. They then place trains from their reserve on
that connection. After a connection is
claimed no other player may use that connection.
The players choose one of three actions to take during their
turn. The first is that they may take
train cards from the five cards that are face up or from the draw deck. The second option is that they may claim a
connection between two cities. The third
option is that they may take additional tickets.
We played the base game again this time. When I looked at my set of tickets I knew it
was going to be a difficult game. Not
one of the three tickets went anywhere near any of the others. I ended up taking the two tickets that were
closest to each other. I knew it was
going to be difficult to be able to get a good score out of the game but I
started to build from the south first to the northwest then to the
northeast. I was actually able to
complete the tickets with fewer issues than I expected. I think that this was mostly because the
other players could not figure out where I was building to until I was
done. I then got and completed two more
low point tickets before the game ended.
I had a good score for track building but my score from the tickets was
relatively low so I ended up in fourth place out of five players.
The final game I played was No Thanks. No Thanks is a simple quick play card game
that is a great filler game. It consists
of a deck of cards that a numbered in sequence 3 to 35 and 55 red plastic
chips. At the start of the game each
player is given 11 chips. The deck of
cards is shuffled and nine cards are removed from the deck face down. The remaining cards are placed in the center
of the playing area. The players then
turn over one card. The first player
decided whether to keep the card or pass it on to the next player. If the player passes on the card they place
one of their chips on it and play continued on to the next player.
This continues until the card is taken by one of the
players. That player also takes all of
the chips that are on top of the card.
Then the next card is revealed and the process begins again until the
deck runs out of cards. If a player ever
runs out of chips then they must take the card that is face up.
The way the game is scored is that the player adds up the
numbers on the cards. If a player has a
number of cards that are in a sequence then they only add the lowest number in
the sequence to their score. The player
then subtracts one point per chip they have remaining from this score. The player with the lowest score wins. The game is usually played for three rounds
in order to even out the scores.
Playing No Thanks I finally got my mojo back. In the first round I was forced to take the
34 card but it had a large number of chips on it so I did not feel too bad
about it. I took four more cards in the
round that were 30 and above that had a good number of chips and connected to
the 34. I ended the round with a -1
score.
The second round was bad for me. I managed to take one of the higher number
cards but could not get the chips to offset the score and I got stuck with a
card that was out of sequence and ended up with 39 points in the round which
brought my score to 38.
In the final round I was able to work my magic again and
took the high cards but did manage to get a lot of chips and I ended the round
with a score of 0 giving me a end of game score of 38 which was far below any
of the other players.
My stats for the event:
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