Gaming Night

[sakon76]

So, we went to the Orange County Boardgamers meetup last night. Fortunately there was a game of Agricola being set up; if I'd had to deal with learning a new game on top of being uncomfortable having to interact with so many strangers, I would have broken down and fled. As it was, it was a very near thing. I still ended up with a tension headache.

The gameplay... was interesting. Our five-person game took four hours. Part of this was spending a half hour selecting our own hands of Minor Improvement and Occupation cards. Part of it was that most of the group were ditherers. Which was an unpleasant novelty. I'm used to playing with people who actually pay attention to the board and use other players' turns to decide what two or three actions they might like to do next. Also, the game included one of the card expansion packs--The Woods, I think? something like that, anyway--which had copious movie references, was a little silly, and introduced magic into the game. I was kind of meh on it.

It was interesting to see that I by far was playing the fewest cards: I had one occupation, and one major improvement (yes, it was my beloved Clay Oven). Everyone else at the table had a dozen plus cards spread by their boards. A very different playing style from what I'm used to.

Yet, somehow, for the very first time ever, I actually won a game. Following the very simple strategy learned from toothycat: diversify. Get some of everything, as many people as you can as early as you can, and cover the board. Winning was a novel feeling, a sensation I'm still not sure how I feel about. Regardless, I'm expecting to get trounced whenever I next get back to Cambridge. Moonshadow is a master at the game.

Comments

[toothycat]

Yay, well done on the win ^^

[dellessa.livejournal.com]

Game night sounds nerve wracking, but fun. @_@ I love board games, unfortunately, my fiance is less than thrilled with them.