more board gaming stuff

[lazarus]

Finally won some games at the board game Meet Up last night. Won a great three handed game of Settlers of Cataan, with the Fishermen of Cataan expansion.

If you haven't played with Fishermen, I highly recommend it. It's less than ten dollars at Amazon. What you get is 6 or 7 chevron tiles that go on various coastal areas around your island. They're pre-numbered. You also get a bunch of fish tokens, with one, two, or three fish on a token. If you have a settlement on the coast where there's a fishing chevron, you get a fish token (two for a city).

You can trade in fish:

2 fish: move the Robber back to the desert.
3 fish: steal a random resource card from someone
4 fish: take a resource card of your choice from the bank
5 fish: build a free road
7 fish: take a free development card

The fishies really speed the game up. I must have traded in 30 last night, which I needed. I was so obsessed with getting on good fish, I ended up having 6 settlements that got nothing but lumber, ore, and finally one that got wool late in the game. Luckily, I was able to get on a 3:1 trade harbour and a 2:1 ore trade harbour fairly quickly, as I was loaded with both ore and lumber and was trading in both fish and 4:1 to get the other resources I needed.

One last wrinkle with the fish: The Old Shoe. If you draw the Old Shoe, you have to put it face up in front of you. It now takes 11 victory points for you to win, instead of ten. Thing is, on your turn, you can give it to anyone who as as many or more victory points as you have, making them go to 11. The Old Shoe turned up early last night, but Alberto forgot to give it to me, and I managed a win with 10 points. Heh.

I also finally won my first game of Power Grid. This is a great game. You bid on power plants that each will power a number of cities for certain resources. You then buy resources (coal, oil, garbage, and uranium) at ever-increasing prices. Then you build into cities. You get more money the more cities you can power each turn.

The map is double sided. We've always played on America before, but this time we played on Germany, which is completely different. In America, the east coast is very cheap to develop, as the cities are close together (you pay a set amount per city, plus a changing amount for building lines between cities). The Midwest is moderately expensive, and the West is hella expensive. For some reason, people seem to win when they base themselves out of the Midwest the most.

There are more maps, which I was told are very fun, so I'm looking to buy those soon.