gaming in photos

3 May 2009. Race for the Galaxy. This kind of starting hand makes me want to cry. I start with a novelty goods (blue) producing world, I have another novelty goods world in my hand, and the Free Trade Association, which is good for novelty goods. Then I also have 3 other cards in my hand that are good for a genes (green) strategy. Also getting these nice 6-cost development cards so early is a pain, because at the start of the game you can ill afford to build them.

4 May 2009. Agricola. This was the highest score that I ever had so far - 57pts (excluding solo games). This was a 2-player game, and I hadn't expected to score that high. I went with a plant-grain-bake-bread strategy, which meant slower to set up my food engine.

My cards worked quite well together.

Michelle's farm in this same game. She had a card that allowed her to keep one animal per room in her house, instead of one animal for the whole house. Thus this unusual sight.

Michelle's cards.

16 May 2009. Through the Ages. At one point in this game, I had two such colonies, and a whole bunch of idle workers. I had too many yellow tokens and too much food, and had to keep, ahem, pumping out population, to avoid corruption. One of these colonies was won from a normal event, the other was discovered by Columbus.

This was the state of my civilisation in the middle of the game. I previously had two Level I farms, and I had destroyed one of them. I simply had too much food. My mining technology was literally stone age. It was my undoing. At this point I had 5! mines. Not good.

My civilisation at game end. In this game I started off reasonably well, maintaining a military lead, and having an extra civil action from the Pyramids. I also had a healthy culture rate. Things started to go wrong when my mining technology failed to progress. Well, I should say I failed to improve my mines. At one point I could choose between picking a mining technology card and a wonder (I think St. Peter's Basilica). Michelle taunted me, and I decided to take the wonder. The wonder was nice enough, but it meant my mines later became obsolete, and I started to suffer from corruption. I kept telling Michelle "Hey, this is just like Malaysia!". I fell behind in production. The other factor that expedited my demise was the fight over colonies. After winning the early colonies, I lost my military, and never managed to catch up. There were many turns where a colony came up, and I had no soldier to fight for it, so Michelle picked those up with just one lousy warrior. I also started getting hammered by events because of my military weakness. E.g. I had lost one of my colonies that gave more yellow tokens.

My special techs, wonders and leaders. This was the first time I had Robespierre as my leader. I only used his ability once. In this game I had two (almost) one-time-use leaders, the other one being Columbus.

Michelle's wonders, special techs, leaders and colonies. She was very technologically advanced, and had many Level III techs.

Michelle's civilisation. I realise we still tend to spend little on military units technologies.

Game board at game end. Michelle was scientifically advanced. I was quite science poor. My culture level was slightly higher, but this was probably only on the last one or two turns. Too little too late. Her total culture overtook mine in mid game and I never managed to catch up. Militarily I was also weaker.