Board game club meeting

Seurapelikerho met last Sunday. Not many people came, but we had a good time nonetheless. I didn't play many games, but those few were good games I had wanted to play, so I'm satisfied.

I started with Villa Paletti, introducing it to the club. We had a good time playing it and the game actually drew some interested spectators who finally witnessed Teemu collapsing the tower. Manu, a friend of mine who studies architecture, won.

I'm working to score as many games of Puerto Rico this year as possible, and therefore played a game of it. My opponents were Ville, Olli and Manu. Manu was a newbie and Olli wasn't that experienced either. The game was quite exciting. I played Factory strategy and managed to get Factory and production of all the five crops. Olli played somewhat similar building-oriented strategy while Ville was the penniless shipper of corn. Manu didn't really play any strategy, and therefore lost the game. No surprises there, Puerto Rico isn't the most newbie-friendly game. Rest of us had a tough competition, however. Ville got 52 points, most of them from shipping. I got 16 from shipping and 38 from buildings while Olli had 14 from shipping and 40 from buildings. I had about 12 dubloons and some goods, while Olli had only three barrels, so I won.

Call of cups had been heard for the first time in Seurapelikerho earlier that night, when Bluff was introduced. I was busy playing Puerto Rico, so I requested it again. As our count had gone down to six, we all sat down to rattle the dice. In the first game, Olli lost all five dice on the first round, while I was able to struggle my way to the final two. Atro and I both had one die, and from that difficult situation, I was able to win. In the next game, however, Atro and I were the first ones to lose all our dice. That's how it goes. My rating for Bluff is solid 8.

Then it was almost the time for me to go home, so I requested something short. Take It Easy, another new game, was ideal. All seven of us (Kimmo had joined us meanwhile) could play and still the game was over in 16 minutes. It isn't the most interesting or interactive game, but any meaningful game that can be played in 16 minutes with seven players is good in my books. When the points were reckoned, I was third, which was nice. I'll rate Take It Easy as 8 with lots of people and less with smaller crowds.

So, another great afternoon spent playing games in good company. The crowd was quite small this time, but I had a good time.