Board games I played last night

Last night my bud Chris and I went to Timegate , a smallish convention based around the T.V. series Stargate and Dr. Who. I went to a few lectures but I spent most of my time in the gaming area and made some great friends in the process. I love games and game theory and I always try to learn new games whenever possible. So without any further ado.....



The first game I played was Robo Rally. This game was created by Richard Garfield and presented it to gaming super-giant Wizards of the Coast the same time he proposed Magic: The Gathering. The premise of the game is pretty simple. You control a robot by "programming" it with movement and action cards. You lay the program cards out in any order and let the game run for a turn. The game basically works like a very basic robotic programming language: move here, rotate X degrees, etc.. The goal of the game is to run around the board and be the first to the finish flag. Players can also attack each other using lasers, bombs, rams, or  what have you.  I had a pretty fun time playing it even though I went through three robots, one thanks exclusively to Chris. The game is rather challenging and requires a great deal of forethought and would probably be enjoyed most by people who know how to program or who have a good grasp of physical orientation, there is a great deal of turning in this game and direction is VERY important.


The next game I played was Dominion by Rio Grande Games. I absolutely loved this game! The game plays out with each player trying to build a deck of action cards, treasure, and victory points. Each player can use treasure to buy from a store to add to their deck and increase their chances of winning. The object of the game is to be the player with the most victory points when one of the victory points store runs out of cards. I picked up the rules to this game very quickly because of my 5+ years of experience of playing Magic: The Gathering. The theories of card advantage and the necessity of card draw can be applied both to Dominion and Magic. But for those who have not played Magic, you are basically building a city in a deck that rewards you for getting efficient cards. I really recommend this game for anyone who played or plays magic as it is quick to set up and games will never go over 40 min, if you played Magic competitively (FNMs and the such) a game could last only 15 min. This game would also probably be a blast for anyone who has not played Magic but would take a little longer to get the hang of and set up.


I have played Settlers of Catan before but this was Chris's first time playing and my first time playing on the 3D 10th Anniversary Edition. Settlers of Catan is considered one of the best board games out now and it is the "Killer App" of board games. These claims are not without merit, it is one of the best-selling board games across the world and has a fanbase nearly everywhere. The premise of the game is that you control a group of Colonists/settlers/whatever and you try to build roads and cities by collecting resources from the bank and from bartering with other players. The first person to 10 victory points wins the game. The game is takes probably an hour to play on average but it could be less or more by a great margin depending on who you play with and what the dice roll. If you have not played this game, you should, it will change the way you think about board games and you will probably never want to play Monopoly again. The 3D version is amazing, the detail is so rich for every hex and it makes you feel like you are playing a video game with amazing renders. All of the materials for the 3D edition are made of high-quality products and come in a Catan-Branded treasure chest, which adds even more to the game's flavor.

 
After crossing the 1 am threshold, the group of gamers at the Con felt a bit burned out by playing rules-heavy games all day and broke out Time's Up!. This game is  a team party game that feels like Scattigories and Cranium. Each player gets to choose famous people from the game's pool of cards and puts them into a deck to play with for one game. One game is split up into three rounds with each round lasting 30 seconds each. In the first game players take turns to try to describe a person on a card using everything but their name to their partner. This goes on until all of the cards have been passed around to each player and correctly guessed. The second round uses the same cards in the first round but players can use pantomime actions and only one word to describe the person on the card. The third round plays like the first two but you can only describe the person by pantomime and meaningless grunts. I had a blast playing this game, its a little more involved than Apples to Apples but takes less time than Cranium. The entire room had a blast playing this game and was extremely entertaining. I am going to buy this game and pretty much playing through it at parties until the cards fall apart.