Lahti games weekend, Friday

Another Lahti gaming weekend is over now. Organised by Peter Munter of Puolenkuun Pelit, the event is rather merry occasion. The participants were all-male invite-only group of friends and friends of friends. The average age of the players is probably a tad higher than what I'm used to and there's a certain bloke mentality involved. The mood of the event is thus rather different from what I'm used to in Seurapelikerho.

Friday games began at home. Olli from the local gamer base was coming with me, so we met at my place to wait for our ride to Lahti. While we were waiting, we played a game of Go.

After about two hours of driving, we finally arrived to Lahti, where a gaming extravaganza was already in full blaze. It was hard to find a space for games, but we managed to find an empty table and got a game of Attika. The four of us included the probably most notable Finnish roleplaying game designer Ville Vuorela alias Burger of Burger Games. Attika was well received by the others, all new to the game. It was a curious game for me too, being the first game I've played on the English edition. I managed to win the game, too. It looked grim, but then I got a chance for a surprise shrine link in the very end of the game. I pulled it through and won the game, leaving other players astonished. Neat.

Next entry in my notebook is for Bang!. I've been wanting to play it for a while now and this was a good chance. Unfortunately, my game didn't go too well. I was inprisoned and promptly executed. Well, then again, I was both an Mexican and an outlaw, so I guess that's what they should've done anyway. I left at that point, but it turned out the Sheriff did win the game. Bang! was one of the most played games of the weekend, I'd guess.

After that we played Finstere Flure, which was a success as well. It was so well received we played two games in a row. Because the board game weekend had a meta game, where all games are scored to find out the king of the weekend, we played a variant which produced a nice ranking of players. We played the game until the very end and then scored the escapees. The first token out got n points, where n is the number of escaped tokens, second one got n-1 and so on. It worked well and the game was good fun, even though I didn't win.

Friday's theme was me introducing new games to people. It continued with Domaine. At last I got a victory for me! I didn't do particularly well in the game, but managed to grab some heavy points in the end (including the Royal City, which I conquered from my worst enemy). Most interesting thing was probably the mountain of money Burger had in the end, leaving no doubt on who would get the bonus for most money.

Then we played a half-succesful game of Nodwick. The concept of real-time play didn't quite get the appreciation it deserves and there wasn't quite enough trading going on. I like Nodwick a lot, but how enjoyable the game is is quite dependent on the players. With the right players, it's a blast.

My last game that evening (played at around 2 am) was Tigris & Euphrates. It was one of my most balanced games ever. In the end, I had score of 7-6-6-6. I thought I had a chance to win the game, as others hadn't collected large cubes on all colours and the game was pretty low-scoring. However, I lost to a score of 8-6-6-6! What a pity.

At that point it was time to go to bed. It was also way past the time I should've gone to bed, resulting in a night of very little sleep. I think I got four or five hours of interrupted sleep, disturbed by some heavy-duty snoring and people entering the sleeping quarters.