February 7, 2009 - The Voyage Continues

Location: Yoda's House
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelP, MichaelU, Nick

Ah, Munchers - a good way to start the day...

To start the day, Steve demoed his two new game acquisitions - Kingmaker and Talisman. Everyone perused the game boards and paraphernalia, asked questions both answerable and unanswerable, and agreed both looked interesting for future sessions.

Next, we started Iron Dragon. Yoda laid out the game and explained the rules (most of them at least : ), prior to getting started. Everyone else was a newbie to this game. This became apparent relatively quickly when a couple of people found themselves in the situation of not being able to deliver a load. Due to inadequate explanations and demonstrations, MichaelU didn't realize that he only got to make each specified delivery a single time and was stranded pretty quickly when he didn't have enough money to build track to make a second delivery. At this point, he became a source of a stream of disasters, as he would throw away his cards every turn and get new ones. Disasters eventually pushed Nick (and very nearly two others) into the same situation. Steve was the only player not to have a very close brush with complete disaster. Eventually MichaelU did get a card which allowed him to deliver something and was able to claw his way back into active play. Nick got money from someone using his track and became active again, so no one was forced to sit out for a really extended period. Networks extended, money came and went, and a remarkable amount of cross-track usage fees changed hands.

The first game ended up lasting until 16:30, as learning such a game leads to much discussion, as well as longer planning and replanning activities as events unfold. By the end of the game (Yoda winning), everyone except MichaelU had connected seven major cities with a network. Everyone understood the mechanics of the game much better by the end, and during cleanup there was a lively discussion of things learned and what different strategies to employ next time. Expect this one to make more appearances in the future.

Unfortunately due to short time remaining, not even a short game was able to be fit in post-Iron Dragon.

Once again, photos courtesy of Steve (this time with a real camera!).

January 3, 2009 - Inaugural Voyage

After some months of idle musings, the first Kansas Game Day was scheduled for January 3, 2009.

Location: Yoda's House
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelP, MichaelU

The day got off to a rocky start with the discovery that Munchers was closed, presumably due to proximity to the holiday. Yoda scrambled to procure alternate doughnuts while the other participants converged. Daily Doughnut filled the gap, but didn't stack up too well by comparison to Munchers.

Doughnuts consumed, the discussion of what to play commenced. Steve brought a LOTR themed game and Illuminati. Yoda's game cabinet was perused.

We started with the LOTR game. It was a game that we all win or lose together. Everyone has to avoid Sauron or everyone loses. In this case, Sauron won. Not having played before, we were figuring out things as we went along. We decided a number of things we might do differently if we play it again.

Pizza ordered for lunch. We played Chronology while waiting for it to arrive. MichaelP won. Steve professed his hatred for such a game.

After lunch, we embarked on a game of Illuminati. MichaelP schemed. MichaelU cheated. (Sometimes we stopped him, sometimes not.) Steve tried to cheat. (We did stop him.) As the time was coming to a close, Yoda took a shot and managed to win, barely.

Yoda brought out Iron Dragon and gave a brief description of the game to set the stage for its future appearance at Game Day.

Game Day photos, courtesy of Steve's iPhone.

Games Played

Herein lies a list of games played on Kansas Game Day, sometime, somewhere, over the... no...

Lord of the Rings
Chronology
Illuminati
Iron Dragon
Kingmaker
Merchant of Venus
Power Grid
Perudo
Puerto Rico
Quiddler

Schedule

The general schedule will be the first Saturday of every month, with a standard planned schedule. Variations from that schedule will be noted here.

Schedule Outline for a Game Day:
08:00 arrival of people and doughnuts, eating of doughnuts commences
09:00 playing should begin no later than this
12:00 (or thereabouts) pizza for lunch!
17:00 nominal end of ceremonies, subject to participants desires and schedules


Next date: 8/1/09

Games planned for 8/1/09:
Tentative proposal: RoboRally

Location for 8/1/09:
Yoda's House

Potential games for the future:
Talisman
Titan
Diplomacy
RoboRally
Ticket to Ride
EuroRails
China Rails
Lunar Rails
Railway Rivals
Rail Baron
Agricola
Settlers of Catan

Game Day Central

This blog is set up to serve as a record of Game Day as it happens in Kansas. Events of the day, as well as schedules and planned games can be found here.