29th Dec Session Report

Weilong and Mun joined Van and myself for games today which would probably be our last session before the reopening of the school term.

We started off with Stone Age which was relatively a new game for all of us. It was the second play for Weilong, Van and myself, and the first for Mun. I was somewhat lukewarm after my first play and hoped a second play would help me assess if the game was worth keeping.

I managed a respectable 2nd with a score of 140+ by nabbing all 8 green bonus cards despite trailing most of the way. Impressively, Mun took the win despite it being her first play with 157 points through some well-diversified scoring. In particular, she took 4 buildings of flexible scoring which secured the bulk of her points.

We then tried Galaxy Trucker since it was the final game from my recent games order that Weilong and Mun haven't tried. They were keen to try it especially after hearing about its 'jigsaw' mechanism.

I started well and took the lead with well-built ships the first 2 rounds. I also realized that being able to complete the ships first were highly advantageous. I managed to benefit from most of the journey cards and had the first turn of the timer during the next ship building phase.

For the 3rd and final round, I suggested to Van that we use the 3A boards since we were more experienced that Weilong and Mun and had relatively handsome leads over them. Boy, was that a mistake. The odd ship shape of the 3A board proved a real headache when searching for pieces. This struggle was accentuated with 4 players since there was greater competition for ship parts. In addition, I noted the long sides of the ship design and made a mental note to acquire side-pointing guns to reduce the ship's vulnerability.

Unfortunately, the pieces were hard to come by with Van snatching them up quickly and I failed to set up my ship as intended. This would prove to be disastrous as my ship quickly unravelled during the journey. We encountered a card with multiple side large meteoroid hits which smashed through the centre of my ship and ripped it half with the destruction of the pilot pod. I had to abandon the journey too as I unwisely released all but 2 of my crew during a previous abandon ship encounter which reaped my 10 cosmic credits.

Van took the win with 76, with an excellently built 3A ship. Mun again impressed with her score of 51 despite it being her first play while myself and Weilong took up the rear with scores of 48 and 28 respectively. Weilong was unfortunate due to the hefty cannon fire penalties during 2 consecutive cosmic zone encounters which took off the rear of his ship.

Van's 3A ship - note all the cannons pointing sideways

The final game we played before dinner was Glory to Rome. This is fast becoming a personal as well as crowd favourite. The game ended with me, Van, Mun and Weilong scoring 30, 17, 14 and 12 respectively. This was the first time we experienced the game ending through the draw pile being exhausted due to two early temple (+4 hand) builds by Van and I.

I took the win by amassing materials in my stockpile and scoring bonus points with the Wall (1 point for every 2 materials in stockpile at the end of the game) as well as hoarding the most gold in the vault with the help of an early Merchant client.

After dinner we decided to go for a game of Agricola at Van's request. Mun had a fantastic hand of cards and built up her farm easily. My cards had to do with food provision mostly which allowed me to multiply my family members early. I ended with a 5-room stone house, 4 farms, 3 stables, 2 pastures and just 1 unfilled space tying Mun for the win with 42 points.

My farm - scored most my points through family and house expansion