Board Games again

Last Thursday, I went once again to Rob's place to play a few games.

I arrived to find them playing Seasons which is a rummy-type card game that Rob and Mark designed, and I helped play test. You can read more about it at its Boardgamegeek entry or you can find out about the guys that invented it and other games they are working on at Dust Bunny Games. I think Rob won the game they were playing which they halted after that round to let me join in. This is a game I love, and will always be happy to play.

We then played a couple of games of San Juan, a card game based on Puerto Rico. I forget how the first game came out, but I remember distinctly coming last for the second one, even though I ended the game. I was in what I thought was a strong position, as I had far more buildings than anyone else, but they had much better scoring buildings. Ah well. I really enjoyed this, and will have to add it to my wish list. It has some very nice mechanics to keep the game to almost purely cards, such that, depending on where they are, the cards can represent built buildings, unbuilt buildings, gold (to pay for buildings and received from the sale of goods), and those goods, as you might guess, are also represented by the same cards.

Next up was Reiner Knizia's Genial. By placing two-hexagons-joined-together tiles on the board in such a way as to match symbols you score points in the appropriate colour. However, your score is score of the colour that has scored the least. So, if your orange is at 8, it matters not one whit if your other colours are at 9 or 18, your score is 8. The game ends either when no more tiles can be placed, or when someone reaches 18 (the maximum score) on each colour. As you can see from the pic, if you look carefully, Rob (on the right) has scored 18, and all of the rest of us have orange lagging behind. A quick look at the board shows that Rob had carefully trapped the orange hexes in, making it very hard for the rest of us to score in orange. It was a great play on his part. OH, and yes, Rob's green scoring marker is som kind of plastic monster. There was a green cube missing from the game, and he's not yet got around to getting a replacement.

Last up was Lord of the Fries. This is a Cheapass game where you have to fill the restaurant orders from the rather interesting ingredients you have in your hands. Oh, and you're a zombie. This is an updated version, in colour, and with extra restaurant menus, giving different menu items that can be filled. We had been playing a long time by this time, so we cut it short because of the hour. I won (though Rob will claim that we didn't finish the game so no-one won, but I didn't hear him say that when they cut short Seasons!)