HoodedHawk

First play of Carson City tonight, with Dylan. As usual, he professed to hating board games and then went and beat me, 48 to 36. I, on the other hand, enjoyed the game regardless of my victory point deficit.

This is a tile laying game, where you have to buy land around Carson city and build various buildings (Saloons, Hotels, Mines, Ranches, etc.). These give you varying incomes, which you use to expand your property holdings. Easy mechanic, and the game should go faster now that we know the rules. This one took about 90 minutes. Would have been shorter without a certain 3-year old absconding with playing pieces.

Pat was hosting an extra game day (started at 12p, though I didn’t arrive until 8:30) (Happy Birthday!). We played Baltimore & Ohio, which is basically an economic game. You are the president of a railroad, and your goal is to expand the railroad as well as increase it’s stock value. You can also invest in (or own) more than one railroad, so you have to figure out the best strategy for capital investment, etc. The game lasted 5.5 hours; this is the first board game I’ve played where a calculator is very handy!

Charles won with $2851, followed by Pat ($2691), Steve/Rob [Rob took over for Steve at 1:30AM] ($2080), Phil ($1526), and me ($1338). This was just an ok game. I’d play it again, but only if something else wasn’t offered. :)

First play of Merchant of Venus (the second edition). We played the “Standard” game (the new version). The opposite side of the board has the “Classic” game, from 1988! We only got through about 17 of the 30 rounds before calling it. Fun – and will go significantly faster now that we have the mechanics, etc. down.

First picture below was “Adel Verpflichtet” (“Hoity Toity”), and I’m not a fan (lots of bidding, etc.).

The rest are from Power Grid (with the Korea expansion). This one I definitely enjoy even if I rarely come close to winning.

Tom Reiss gave a reading and signed book his book, “The Black Count” at Politics and Prose bookstore in DC. Very engaging speaker, and I actually finished this book prior to the talk. Great time.