What I Played Last Night

I got to game night late (8pm) for various reasons.  Most everyone was in a game of 7 Wonders except Kenny.  He was setting up Command & Colors: Napoleonics for he and Chris.  Once he got it set up we played a game of Parade.  He beat me pretty handily.  Around then the 7 Wonders game finished.  Adam, Shawn, Keith, and I started a game of Homesteaders.  I’m not sure I did a good job of explaining the game but my fears were alayed soon enough as Adam jumped out to what seemed to be a substantial lead.  He and Shawn went back and forth for the first several auctions.  Shawn picked up some good properties early and got a $ engine working well.  He was taking in 5-7 silver each turn at first then 9-12 by game end.  Adam picked up 5 debt tokens by the fifth round but had some good properties for it.  Then he built the bank and those debt tokens began to disappear.  Meanwhile Keith and I were struggling to keep up.  Keith picked up a couple of workers to get some income coming in.  He started gaining some victory points with the meatpacking plant.  Early on I realized that I was not going to do well competing for properties as I could not get any $ or trade tokens coming in.  So I decided to go strictly for victory points.  I worked up the railroad development track and also was able to get the church.  That earned me 10 vp and generated 2 vp per turn.  That seemed to be pretty weak to me, especially since I only had 2 workers on my gold mine.  So I was getting some gold each turn and was able to buy some resources once in a while.  The last auction was a battle with Adam for the 6 vp charity token.  He had the lawyer and was upping each time.  He finally bowed out at $12.  I had to take a debt token to pay but I got it.  That enabled me to take the lead.  The final scores were 41, 37 – Adam, 32 – Shawn, 28(?)-Keith.  My second win at Hypermind!

Next up was Hansa Teutonica.  Chris has been raving about this one so I was eager to play.  He set it up for Keith, Adam, himself, and me and explained it to Keith and I.   It took a minute or two but I got a control of a couple of important cities and kept scoring from them.  I also started putting a chain together.  Keith was really working his cube bag, enabling him to replenish his supply each turn.  Adam was having some trouble getting a strategy going.  But Chris was eating the special tokens up.  This enabled him to take extra actions at key times or wide a threatening opponent (usually me) from my strategy of getting a long chain of controlled cities.  In the end, Chris’ accumulation of the special tokens did us in.  I did not realize that they were worth points at the end so I didn’t pay them much attention.  Keith was able to get control of the central chain of cities for 7 vp.  And he activated his key to get a multiplier on these to get second place.  I came in a respectable third.

It was a good if short night.  Parade is fun and one I will be picking up.  I was very glad to get Homesteaders to the table again and introduce it to some new people.  Everyone rated it an 8 and want me to continue bringing it.  I enjoyed Hansa Teutonica.  I didn’t think I would but I was surprised.  It is going on the buy list.  Only downside is that I did not get to play Eminent Domain.