This week at my weekly GameNight a couple of the games that our gaming group had yet to play together finally hit the table. I had mentioned both of these in a previous post. First we played Dominion followed by Puerto Rico. I'll describe how it went. DominionJennie and Dave brought over Dominion along with expansions. We played a five-person variant of the game using the additional expansion cards. Published by Rio Grande Games and designed by Donald X. Vaccarino this is a "deck-building" card game. As a matter of fact, this is probably considered to be the "first" deck builder. I'll try to describe what is meant by "deck-building", at least in this game. Each player starts with a small number of cards (all the same). Throughout the game players choose to "purchase" new cards by playing money and action cards from their hand. As new cards are taken they are placed in a discard pile along with the played hand of cards. Eventually a player will run out of cards in his playing deck and hand and must shuffle the discard pile to make a new playing deck and hand of cards. As the game goes on, the deck grows and becomes seeded with cards you have purchased from the selection available on the table. Your "deck" becomes unique to you and your choices throughout the game. This was really my first opportunity at playing a deck-building game as I believe it also was for Jeff and Chris who were also learning the game for the first time. The goal of the game is to gain the most victory points throughout the purchase green Estate, Duchy and Province cards worth one, three and six points respectively. Once four of the stacks of cards were depleted the game ended and all victory points were counted. Dave won! Of course, the guy teaching the game wins. Next time we're coming after you Dave. Our game took probably about an hour including setup and teaching of the game, plus we played with a larger player count of five. Once familiar with rules and at a count of three-four, the game should play in about 30 minutes or so. We really enjoyed learning and playing this classic deck builder. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking and didn't get any photos of our game-play. If you'd like to learn more, I've provided a link to Board Game Geek for you: DOMINION (BGG) Puerto RicoBrian showed up a little later with Puerto Rico. This game designed by Andreas Seyfarth and published by Alea is a colonial era game of farming and city-building in Puerto Rico. It is a game for three to five players and we had a total of six (Jennie, Dave, Chris, Jeff, Brian and me). So Jennie and Jeff decided to work as one team, which I dubbed "Jeffnifer". Brian taught us the game. To summarize, each player is given a player board to place their plantations and build a city. Using an interesting action selection process, the active player chooses a "Role" on their turn. That role defines the action that can be done – All players get to perform the selected role/action, however the player who made the selection gets a special "privilege" that usually gives them a little something extra for having selected it. The general objective in making these selections is to give yourself the best action possible and attempt to cause other players to either get little-to-no benefit from it. Colonists, plantations and buildings are gradually added to each players tableau adding benefits and production. Eventually the game end triggers when the colonists run out, victory points run out, or one player's city is completely full. Then, the current round is completed and victory points are calculated. In our game Brian won and Dave came very close behind in second. This game definitely had a higher level of calculating and decision making. It was a bit of "brain burn", but not too much. Very enjoyable. I think I speak for the group when I say we all enjoyed playing Puerto Rico. Our game took us over three hours to setup, teach/learn and play. I believe a typical game with four-five would take around two hours. If you'd like to learn more, I've provided a link to Board Game Geek for you: Puerto Rico (BGG) As I mentioned, we finally got a chance to play these two games with our GameNight group. I can see them coming back to the table again. The trick is trying to find time to play all the games we enjoy as often as we'd like. Both Dominion and Puerto Rico are highly regarded in the hobby board-game world. I think I'm safe in saying they could be considered "classics". If you liked my brief descriptions of gameplay, consider finding a copy to play or purchase. Hopefully your group will enjoy as much as the group at King's-GameNight.
Game On!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2021
King's GameNight
Special 10% off Coupon Code: KGN10
|