After Action Report – Board Game Night @ Comic Quest, May 22, 2014

I attended Board Game Night at Comic Quest on Thursday.  There were 25 people at the event and five games were being played at any one time.

I played six games at the event including one game twice.

The first game I played was Lost Cities.  Lost Cities is one of the games from the first generation of Euro games that made it to the United States.  It is a two person card game.  The theme attached to the game is the players are leading expeditions to five lost cities.  What the players find in each city is represented in a deck of cards that consists of 5 suits of card that have cards numbered 1 – 10 and three multiplier cards.  Each player starts the game with a hand of 8 cards and they take turns either playing a card in front of them or discarding a card into the appropriate suit’s pile and then taking a card from the draw deck or one of the discard piles.  The game ends when the draw pile is depleted.

Game Review – Take It Easy!

Take It Easy!
Number of Players	1 - 8
Play Time	20 Minutes
Ages	8 Years and up

This week I am reviewing a abstract game that is light enough to be considered a family game many people but does have a strong tactical planning element to it.  The game I am referring to is Take It Easy.

There is no theme attached to Take It Easy.  The players have a hexagonal board which is divided in to 19 hexes.  Along with the board the players receive 27 pieces that each has 3 lines going through them.  Each of the lines on the piece has a point value assigned to it.  The goal is to be able to make a line of the same point values run from top to bottom, diagonally from the left and diagonally from the right that stretches across the board.  If the player can accomplish that they can score the points the line is worth times the number of spaces in the row.  For example if a player make a line 3 hexes long that goes from one side of the board to the other where each piece of the line is worth 5 points, the player receives 15 points.

Example of Take It Easy! pieces

Game play is very simple.  One of the players is designated the caller and turns their tiles face down while the other players keep their tiles face up.  The caller turns over the pieces at a time and all the players including the caller place the same piece on their board wherever they want as long as it is not covering a piece that they have already placed and they may not move any piece that has already been placed on the board to accommodate the new piece.  After all the players have placed their piece on their board, the caller turns over the next piece and repeats the process.  Once all 19 spaces on the board have been filled, the game is over and the players count up their scores per the example above.  The player who can place the highest value of lines across their board wins the game.

Take It Easy is an easy game to learn and a quick game to play.  Each game lasts 10 -15 minutes.  I think that the game is better played over a number of rounds, usually three and the scores for each round are added up in order to even out any luck factor.

The game is ideally suited as a filler game and can be fit in at the beginning or the end of a night of gaming or even in between two heavier games.  In order to spice the game up a little, the most current version of the game has added a number of variant rules to the game so that players can change it up from time to time, but the game without the variants is good enough and worth the purchase price.

 If you are someone that likes abstract games and wants to get other players interested in possibly playing other abstract games with you, Take It Easy is a good gateway game for you to try.  It gives players the look and feel of an abstract without the deep thought or time commitment that some abstracts require.

Bottom line if you are either looking for a filler game, or a gateway abstract game, I would recommend you take a look a Take It Easy.

If You Want to Get the Game Mentioned Above:

Scorecard Review – September 2013

Now that September is being put into the rear view mirror it is time to do a review of the Scorecard.

September

September was a very active month for me as I played the second most number of games in a month thus far this year.

I played 22 games over the course of 7 events during the month for an average of 3.14 games per event which is up from the 2.67 games per event I played in August.  It is the highest number of games I have played per event in a month thus far this year beating the record of 3 games per event I played in April.  This can be attributed to the 11 games I played in the last week of September.

The number of games that I won in September doubled to 6 games compared to the 3 games in August.  I came in second 9 times, third 5 times, fourth one time, and fifth one time.  May Average standing for September was 2.18 which is an improvement from 2.67 I had in August.

I played six games more than one in September:  Bazaar, India Rails, Lost Cities: the Board Game, Martian Rails, Take It Easy!, and Trans America.

I played four games for the first time in September:  Castle Panic, Evo, Rialto, and Santa Fe Rails.

My stats for the month of September are:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Australian Rails	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
Bazaar	2	1	-	1	-	-	-			2.00
Castle Panic	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Empire Builder	1	-	-	-	-	1	-			5.00
Evo	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
India Rails	2	-	1	1	-	-	-			2.50
Iron Dragon	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Lost Cities: Board Game	2	1	1	-	-					1.50
Martian Rails	2	1	1	-	-	-	-			1.50
Nippon Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Rialto	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		-	3.00
Santa Fe Rails	1	1	-	-	-	-	-		-	1.00
The Castles of Burgundy	1	-	1	-	-					2.00
Take It Easy!	2	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.50
The Haunting House	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Trans America	2	-	1	-	1	-	-			3.00
Totals	22	6	9	5	1	1	-		-	2.18

Year to Date

The total number of games I have played year to date 100 games at 39 events for an average of 2.56 games per event.  This is up 0.12 games per event since our last check in.

I have won 15 games thus far this year.  This improved my overall standing for the year to 2.64 which is better by 0.13 from the 2.77 I had at the end of August.

Below are the stats for the game I played most frequently thus far year to date:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Iron Dragon	7	1	3	2	1	-	-			2.43
India Rails	6	-	4	2	-	-	-			2.33
Martian Rails	6	1	3	2	-	-	-			2.17
Bazaar	5	2	-	2	-	1	-			2.60
Airlines Europe	3	-	2	1	-	-	-			2.33

My stats shifted over to the positive side with the 6 victories and 9 second places I had in September.  I still did have a fourth and a fifth place due to problems I had in games of Empire Builder and Trans America, but they did not hurt me too much.  Hopefully I will see this trend continue into October.