Game Night

Friday Jan. 8, 2010 - Gamer's Inn
This evening started out with Nathan Winchester and I grabbing a bit of Indian for diner before heading to the Inn. There were not a lot of folks when we arrived, but shortly after that there were 5 of us, so Noah Antwiller pulled out Power Grid and one of the new maps. Two of the guys hadn't played before, so Noah started to explain. While he was in the midst of that, we had two more folks show up. Matthew and Amelia were also supposed to be arriving shortly, so Nathan and I bowed out of the Power Grid game and settled down to play Hive. Things were going fairly well, until we discovered that the game was going to be a draw. The last piece played would end up with us both being surrounded. I suppose it is fitting we played to a draw and now I wonder - if you can't play the queen first, and playing it second (as we both did) results in an easy tie condition, what do you play for the first couple of pieces? I still enjoy this simple and yet intriguing game.
We finished and were then joined by James Smyth and Doug Oppedahl. I pulled out Khronos for us as I wanted to try this again and Nathan had wanted to try this. I explained the rules (very poorly - besides being tired, I just confused a lot of things). The game was entertaining, but by the sixth (of seven) rounds, we realized how muddled I had done the rules. We forged ahead (playing wrong) and we all want to revisit the game, next time playing it correctly. I'm not even sure who won the game - Nathan or James. I still enjoy the concept of this game and really want to play again. Also, despite playing it incorrectly, the game played pretty quickly with four players - faster than I thought it would.
We finished about the same time as the Power Grid game wrapped up, so Noah and his brother Miles Antwiller joined Nathan and I to play Chaos in the Old World. Nathan played Khorne and had no trouble at all beating us up round after round. Despite our best efforts to block him with our Chaos cards, his were highly effective and he won easily with a dial victory. Miles played Slaanesh and must have been tired, because he kept missing Noah and I's hints about how to kick ass (if he had scored more threat, he might have kept Khorne in check. I was Tzeentch again, but couldn't get anything going as everyone seemed to make a point of bashing my cultists. Noah was Nurgle, but couldn't come close to matching Khorne's threat tokens each round.