Game Session, May 28, 2006

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Brad, Pat, Alex, Richard, Brian, Paul.
Played: Gother than Thou, That's Life, Goa, La Citta, Sherlock Holmes.

Thanks to Brad for the pics!


Gother than Thou: I first read "Gother" to sound like "gopher", as opposed to "being more goth-like", an indication of how successful I was likely to be in this short and silly romp. In the rules sheet it describes itself is as a parody on the goth subculture and, like Army of Darkness, each card should be read as it is played. Don't enter too much emotional investment in this one; your fate is largely in the hands other players as they play cards on you like ''Visit from your Mom", which gives you a cash boost, but also drastically lowers your Ankh score (ie., the index of true Goth-ness that you need to win).
Brad gave us a brief segment of This Corrosion, which to Pat sounded like a re-do of Good Vibrations. The latter stuck with us for the rest of the night.
20 minutes for five of us. Brad won.



That's Life: The tile jumping and claiming game, with clover leaves to convert negative tiles into positive ones.
I sat out of this one having dinner. All over in 20 minutes again.

Results: Brad: 19. Richard: 17. Brian: 9. Pat: 6. Alex: 1.



Goa: This is one that I've had my eye on for a long time, so I'm pleased I finally got to play. There seem to be a lot of "moving parts" in the game engine here, which take a bit of getting used to. I found this reminded me a lot of Puerto Rico, although not simply because of the theme of colonial commodity production and shipping. Actually the game mechanics and actions of these two games have nothing in common that I can see. Other than the theme similarity, I think it is the multiple paths to victory element, and the fact that on first playing, one just doesn't know the best course of action or the true value of things. Which means this wants more playing!
So like early playings of Puerto Rico, the feeling after ending the game is similar - there are many paths to victory and there is much to learn and improve upon in one's tactics. Let's do this one again soon!
122 minutes, incl. rules.

Results: Pat: 44. Paul: 34. Brad: 32.



La Citta: Richard, Brian and Alex played this while the other 3 of us played Goa, starting and finishing within 1 minute of us, perfect timing in readiness for the last game of the night.
Apparently Brian spent some considerable game time just on the wrong side of the starvation knife-edge, which obviously affected his final score. 121 minutes incl. rules.

Results: Alex: 32. Richard: 30. Brian: 21.
Alex celebrates his win:










Sherlock Holmes: All six of us came back together for this crazy card game of hunting down villains and depleting one's hand of cards. To compliment your hand, a round starts with "the game is afoot" - I wonder if the designers thought of this?
Alex's generous use of Thick Fog was most amusing, as was Pat's Scottish accent whenever Scotland Yard appeared. He didn't really need to be reminded that Scotland Yard wasn't actually in Scotland...
We ended up playing three rounds, with Richard winning deservedly. Although you are at the mercy of the random card draws and the unpredictable actions of other players, he did consistently make the right plays.
53 minutes with 6 of us.

Results (lower is better): Richard: 3. Pat: 12. Paul: 45. Brian: 76. Alex: 108. Brad: 131.