My first gaming of the new year took place Friday. It was meant to be Wednesday but a monkey wrench was thrown into that plan. Such as the community centre not being open when Dave and I got there!
But five of us met up last night to play some games. Between us we had enough games to choose from that would outnumber an average persons game collection.
After some catching up it was time to choose a game to play.
Jonathan wanted to try Cascadia and it was a game I was interested in trying to.
There was such a great gaming moment when Charlene cost herself 24 points by joining her two groups of bears together to make a single one. It was a classic moment of “oh shit, why did I do that?”
I have to admit this was a nice drafting game. Not the heaviest of games. I like the variety of scoring cards that influence what you draft during the game on the animal side. Plus you have other means of getting points based on the terrain tiles. It gives some variety in the tactics and the way to get points.
Ben took the honours.
After Jonathan left we had a game of Stich fur Stich.
It’s a weird combo of mechanics. Think deduction with trick taking!
A player randomly chooses a character and a weapon who did the crime (?) from their set of tiles. This pairing secretly decides trumps for that round.
The players then play a card from their hand. The person that chose the tiles then declares who won the trick, but not why. The other players then try and work out what the two trump tiles are.
The other players then secretly select the tiles they think are trumps, show them to the person who knows and they say yes or no if the guess was right.
The trick taking repeats until all cards are played.
I scoring for the player who chose the trumps is based on how long it takes the others to all guess the trumps plus the tricks taken. Whilst the other players score on the number of cards in hand when they guess correctly and tricks won.
It took a round or two to warm to the game. Especially when Charlene “broke” the game on the first couple of tries by guessing right first time!
I’d be interesting to see what Jonathan thinks of the game. He does like deduction games.
Charterstone Saturday
Saturday saw games three and four of the Charterstone campaign finally happen.
There had been a long pause since starting it due to diary conflict!
Somehow I won a game! I think it’s my first win even taking into account the aborted campaign I played a couple years back.
It really is interesting to see stuff we never saw in the aborted campaign. So there is still moments of mystery for us who took part in that previous campaign.
At the end of the second game we did set a date for the next session.
We finished off with FTW!
Another new card game from Ben’s collection. He does have a knack for finding interesting and fun filler card games.
It was enjoyable. An interesting combo of keeping your highest value card and trying to get rid of the rest of your hand. At the end of the round you score your highest value card in hand minus the total of your remaining cards in hand.
Two great days of gaming. And a great way to start off the new year.