Mid-week Gaming

Dion called to see if I was up for some gaming, so Nathan Winchester and I dropped on over to his place. I thought we'd be getting in some Power Grid, but we ended up playing Agricola instead (for some reason, Thomas felt Agricola would be faster despite having played many games with Dion before). It was Dion Garner, Morgan Burt, Thomas Dunaj and Nathan and I. So we pulled out Agricola, did a draft with the I deck and off we went. This was the first time I had played the I deck before. It allows for a number of things to happen off other players, though most of what I saw wasn't really detrimental towards others (Nathan and Morgan each had one thing that cost you resources when you took a certain action), but for the most part, the interactive pieces were available to all or just piggybacked off actions to give you a benefit. During the draft, I mostly grabbed a few cards that matched up decently towards The Well - hoping to get an early start on food. I also got a minor improvement that gave me food anytime someone slaughtered any animal for food. Well, my well strategy seemed to play out. Between the early food from my Well related cards and the rate at which Nathan and Dion killed animals, I never worried about food and focused on getting points on the board. This allowed me to nab a lot of animals for my farm and afforded me the ability to get 5 family members at the end of the game. Final scores: Dion-35, Morgan-33, Thomas-26, Nathan-25, Charles-44 (I think 16 or 17 of those were bonus points from cards). BTW, Dion grabbed extra family members early in the game which the slowest guy should never do as I'm sure Dion added about 30 minutes to the game trying to figure out what to do with his extra guys at the end of each round ;) One last thing about drafting cards. It really shouldn't take too long to do the draft. Look them over and quickly and find something that is either cheap and helpful early, or compliments something you have already. If you do that, you can eliminate about half the cards you see each time you are passed a new stack. The point to drafting is so you don't end up with a handful of cards that never let you build your food engine, or cards that are all end game scoring for very different things. Its not like Dominion where you are trying to build the BEST hand - its really about just not having a CRAPPY hand.
Next up, we had a little time left for one more game, so Dion asked if we'd play Attika. This is one I haven't played in a while, so I was happy to teach the game. I also discovered that I had previously mis-understood a rule about the amphoras (you only earn them if you build the building group together - its not enough to just get them built). Anyway, I ended up being the unlucky first player (I think the first player gets hosed) and of course, didn't draw my main city, instead drawing The Fountain and the Silvermine - whoopppeee :( Then I spent the rest of the game trying to block out Morgan and Dion from connecting two temple/shrine things. Morgan was looking close to doing so, then Dion, but it was Nathan that was able to slap down all his roads for the connection. Though I still like this best as a two player game, its a good closer for four players and (like half the games I have) should come out more often.