Sunday, February 08, 2009

Friday Night Gaming

My wife was going out with some friends Friday night, so after I got the kids in bed, Nathan Winchester came by for a little two-player gaming. We started out with C&C:Ancients. I really enjoy the system and like the whole series (I think it grows on you the more you play). We started with the first scenario (Battle of Akragas) with Nathan playing the (dirty)Carthaginians and I took the Syracuse army. As is typical for me, the dice hated me and Nathan won his first game 5-3. Rather than flipping sides, we moved to the next scenario (Crimissos River) and kept the same alliances. This time, I was afraid the sacred band of Carthaginians was going to make me miserable, but I wiped them out and had a commanding lead. Nathan got one kill in to avoid the shutout as the dice that hated me in the first game, hated him in the second.
Next, I pulled out a game I enjoy that plays pretty quickly for two - Taluva. After I showed him how to play, he asked for a second helping. I think he enjoyed this one and he seemed right on the edge of groking it, but experience helped me to win both our sessions. I have played this with three and it is really different than with two - I need to bring this along next week to see it with four.
After that, I showed Nathan Pandemic. The two us us went head to head with a 5-epidemic deck. Nathan as Scientist and myself as the Researcher. I fed Nathan cards and we cured two, but the yellow disease had manifested itself nastily in South America, and outbreaks happened way too much. We finally lost after the third epidemic, when we didn't have enough yellow cubes to keep going.
We ended the night with a playing of Attika. I like this two player, though it was a bit vanilla this night. I had two advantages over Nathan - I drew my city first token, and I got my harbor down right before he did in a prime spot, saving me a good amount of cost. I'd have likely won sooner than I did, but I kept drawing my whites in basically reverse optimal order. I built all my buildings while Nathan still had two left to go.

2 comments:

Bobby said...

Commands & Colors: Ancients is awesome!

When I play Taluva with less than four players, I remove 12 tiles per missing person from the mix at the beginning of the game. This allows the game to flow at the same pacing with each number of players, otherwise with less players the games almost always come down to the premature win.

Things of No Interest said...

You know, I'd be willing to try that as a Taluva variant, but I don't mind that the game plays differently with 2. It is a bit like Samurai in that you just have to approach the game differently for the number of players.