On Saturday, October 17, 2009 we had our first boardgame day at my new house. A bunch of us meet up every year at Unity Games to play games, and last year I said, "Why are we paying $15 each to meet in a hotel ballroom and play boardgames when we could meet at my house for free?"
So we did.
The day started out with Chaos in the Old World, a game based on the Warhammer 40K universe, I think. Here's the best review of the game:
DowntimeTown Episode 6: Chaos in the Old World from Robert Florence on Vimeo.
Present were Kevin McGuire, Rob Palmer, Jason Lutes, Dan Tennant, and myself. We actually started with waffles and a syrup-off because Kevin brought real maple syrup from Maine, and Jason brought real maple syrup from Vermont. After waffles (which weren't all that great, I've made better) there was no clear winner on which was the better syrup.
Since Dan was late, we went right to Chaos while he munched on waffles.
It's only a four player game. I played Korne, the Blood God. I was losing miserably on the victory point chart and really didn't have a prayer, but there are four dials which afford an alternate way to win.
Basically you place units, fight, and try to dominate lands. If you dominate a land enough you corrupt it, and if you corrupt it enough, you ruin it. When you ruin a land, you get mega points. I was unclear on the way corruption worked, but it didn't matter. The Blood God just wants units to die. You don't have to win a battle, you just have to kill something, and if you kill something in enough places, you get to turn your little wheel.
Since it was clear that I wasn't going to win on victory points, everyone kind of ignored me. I decided to just spoil all their plans, so I started playing cards that forbade corruption to be played on specific areas. Then I attacked everywhere I could.
I won. It was weird.
Break for BBQ and some House of the Dead: Overkill on the Wii. Then we playtested Jason's game, which is based on pulps from the 20's and 30's.
I played the Arch Villain. It's a big, sprawling, long game with hilarious characters, and the mechanic of building wonderfully cheesy stories. I killed Dan's character, but was basically getting my ass handed to me by Dr. Radium (Kevin). He was an amazing Dr. Radium, with an authentic accent. I tried to seduce his sidekick, Gunther, who had a tommygun and dynamite. I would have totally wiped out Dr. Radium, but Gunther kept his wits and resisted my wiles. Damn you, Gunther!
That's Kevin as Dr. Radium. We were about halfway through when we noticed it was 8pm, so we took a vote and decided to call it in order to get a third game in.
The third game was... Battlestar Galactica with the Pegasus Expansion!
We've played this before, but not with the expansion. Rob played Admiral Caine, Kevin was Baltar, Jason was Starbuck, Dan was Tigh, and I was Dualla, so Caine and Dualla were the new characters. There's also a new type of character-- a Cylon leader. I was torn as to whether to take one of them, but it would seem to deny the whole "who is the Cylon?" aspect of the game, which is the best part.
We had our usual crisis at the beginning of the game, got out of it, and then had a relatively quiet period. Once the second round of "You are a Cylon" cards came out, Baltar (Kevin) used his power to see if Caine (Rob) was a Cylon. He then made Caine vice president, in order to show that he trusted Rob. Unfortunately, no one trusted Kevin, especially Rob. Rob had Baltar executed, thus proving that he was human, AND once Kevin came back (as Roslyn) there was no way for the new character to ever become a Cylon. So it was clear to everyone that Caine and Roslyn were human.
That left Tigh, Dualla, and Starbuck, and two of the three were probably Cylons. Yikes!
In these games, everyone always seems to think I'm the Cylon (because I usually am). I knew I wasn't a Cylon, and the next turn Jason revealed himself. That meant that Dan was the Cylon, but Rob was looking to execute someone:
See that look in his eyes? Yeah, he was murderous. I took my chance and had Tigh thrown in the brig. If we distrusted Tigh enough (and we did), then Caine could have him executed, which Rob did.
I've got to say, that if I were the Cylon, it would have been a masterstroke. Accuse the human of being a Cylon, get him executed, then reveal myself and throw the fleet into a pit of despair. On the other hand, it got rid of our Cylon and didn't allow him to do whatever nasty thing his card said he could do when he was revealed.
Then it was pretty much a numbers game on New Caprica. Without the expansion, the game usually deflates once the Cylons are revealed. This still had a good bit of tension, but it was like having to learn another game at the tail end of this one.
In the end, Dualla's power of moving civilian ships around saved us, and for the first time ever, the humans won the game. Well, not ever, but the first time that I've played it.
We finished about 1:30am for a total of about 14.5 hours of gaming goodness.
