boardgaming in photos

30 Mar 2011. Race for the Galaxy. This Imperium Planet Buster is from the 3rd expansion Brink of War. This is basically the Death Star in Star Wars. It can destroy a whole planet. And my wife played this on me, busting one of my planets to smithereens. This was the first time ever that I suffered from such a fate.

My tableau. After getting my planet blown to bits, I hurriedly played the Universal Peace Institute to bring myself to negative military strength, so that I could not be target by the Death Star anymore. By game I actually still managed to win, mostly because of the 6-dev card Pan Galactic Hologrid, which gave me a lot of bonus points for novelty goods (blue) worlds.

Michelle's tableau. Our scores were 60 vs 53. She went for a military strategy but unfortunately did not draw many valuable military worlds at all.

3 Apr 2011. Through the Ages. There was a period when this blog had tons of photos of this game. It is still the go-to long game for Michelle and I. This is Michelle's civilisation.

In this game Michelle invested a lot on colonisation, but she was very unlucky with her card draws and never drew many colonies. She had the Colossus which helped with colonisation, and also Cartography, which also helped. But she only managed to get two measly colonies the whole game.

My civilisation. I struggled with both stone and food production in the early game. Nikola Tesla helped me a lot in production towards the late game.

The other part of my civilisation.

This was the end of Age III, and before the resolution of the last four event cards. I (white) was ahead in science rating and military strength, while Michelle (red) was ahead in culture rating. Michelle was 12pts ahead of me.

After resolution of the last four event cards, I won by 7pts!

The last four events. Three of them benefited me more - for stone production, military units and government and special blue technologies. Only one benefited Michelle more - for happy faces. Through the Ages is a game that Michelle often loses at, but she is always willing to play.

9 Apr 2011. I've always liked Attika. Nowadays when Michelle and I play, we are never able to connect two temples, and games always end with completing all buildings.

My copy is the German version. I bought it in Taiwan. "Brunnen" means "Well".

9 Apr 2011. San Juan. Being such a big fan of Race for the Galaxy, San Juan should be quite obsolete. But it is different enough that once in a while I still bring it out and I still enjoy playing it.

10 Apr 2011. Keltis expansion. Michelle and I had not played this for some time, and it gave us quite a challenge. It is much more challenging than the base game. It feels very different. Definitely not meant for casual players.

In the expansion you are not limited to one pawn per path, because there is no concept of single paths anymore. The various paths criss-cross one another. I am a little tempted to get Keltis Oracle, which is quite strategic as well, at least the iPhone version, but then I don't really play the base game or expansion all that much, so I'm holding off.

15 Apr 2011. My second game of Inca Empire, this time a 3-player game with Han and Allen, who were both new to the game. The 3-player version played quite well, better than I had expected. 4-players is still best. With 3-players, the pilgrimages are excluded. Some other event cards are excluded too.

16 Apr 2011. Another game of Through the Ages with Michelle. This was my civilisation. I missed out on the Age II lab, but my Age II libraries helped me to maintain a decent science rating.

James Cook helped me tremendously. 5 colonies meant 10 culture points per turn!

Michelle's civilisation. She went culture-heavy quite early, with her theatres.

Her wonders were culture focused too. Aristotle is still her favourite leader. The only colony that she had was due to Columbus' special ability.