Sunday, September 16th -- your next game day at Plenty

Dear Gamers of Olympia,


Our next game day at Plenty will take place Sunday, September 16th!

We'd like to get some feedback on what games you'd like to see offered in the next several months. Below is the master list of all the games we've ran at game day. A few of these games are no longer readily available to us, but I've included them all for the sake of completeness. Of course, there are many games that we haven't ran before that we are likely to play, but I always wonder if we don't repeat games enough. A lot of games are more fun the 2nd time you play them after all. Please let me know if there are any of these that you'd like to see offered again.

For more info on the games visit boardgamegeek.com and enter the game title in the search field.

Roborally

Ticket to Ride

Settlers of Catan

Zombies!

Pirate's Cove

Axis & Allies miniatures

Shadows Over Camelot

In the Shadow of the Emperor

Carcassonne

Battlestations

Pirates of the Spanish Main

Conquest of the Empire

Bang!

Puerto Rico

Arkham Horror

Fearsome Floors

Wings of War

Tigris and Euphrates

A Game of Thrones

Primordial Soup

Dungeon Twister

Turn the Tide

Railroad Tycoon

Princes of Florence

Clout

Memoir '44

Tikal

Amun-Re

Junta

Condottiere

El Grande

The Great Space Race

Thurn & Taxis

Fury of Dracula

Mystery of the Abbey

Tempus

Marvel Heroes

Power Grid

Plunder

Samurai

C&C: Ancients

Reef Encounter

Formidable Foes

Fire & Axe

Chrononauts

Hansa

Friedrich

Catan: Struggle For Rome

Funny Friends

Winds of Plunder

Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper

Race the Wind

Shogun

Cosmic Encounter

Mississippi Queen

Freya's Folly

Meuterer

Lemme know if I forgot any!

The games for Sunday, August 26th

Dear Gang,

Rather than repost my whole email, I decided to just include the game descriptions and some photos. Please email me to reserve a seat!

Wings of War

The Game Schedule for Sunday, August 26th:

1st Session, 3:00 pm:


Ted will dog fight with up to Five (5) other WWI aces in Wings of War !

In Wings of War each player is a crazy WWI ace performing daredevil flying stunts and trying to shoot down the enemy. Being shot might just damage your plane or send you down in flames. Don't worry, you can float down with a parachute, jump into a new plane, and re-join the fray. Each plane flies a little differently due to having a unique movement deck. This deck is used to plan your movement three moves in advance. Should you shoot ahead? Turn left? Perform an Immelman? There's a great element of trying to guess where your opponent(s) will be so you can position yourself for the kill. I expect Ted will probably play this with teams.

This is Ted's first time offering this game with gorgeous miniatures. They don't change the game materially but they do make it feel more like you're a kid gaming with your toys. Hooray!

Carcassonne

1st Session, 3:00 pm:


John will try to out-meeple up to Four (4) others in Carcassonne!

Carcassonne is considered one of the gateway Eurogames that are often recommended to people new to the hobby. It's a tile placement game in which the map is created as you play. Every turn you pull a tile from the pool and place it against one of the previously played tiles. If you start a new object (city, road, farm or monastery), you can place one of your "meeples" to mark it.

As subsequent tiles are arrayed on the board, objects get bigger or even merge. When roads or cities are completed, or a monastery is surrounded, the meeple is returned to you and you score the points. However, farmers are not returned and will score points at the game end.

Therefore, it's possible to have all of your control markers locked on the board on incomplete objects, and not be able to convert them into farmers later in the game. You must balance the need to score points during the game, and the need to score farmer points at game end. Carcassonne won the 2001 German Spiel des Jahres.

The photo shows Carcassonne being played at Carcassonne.

Shogun

1st Session, 3:00 pm:

Frank will challenge up to Four (4) other Daimyo for the title of Shogun !

WARNING: THIS GAME WILL LAST THROUGH BOTH SESSIONS!
The game might only last three hours, but it is expected to run too long for players to play in a second game.

Shogun is set just previous to the unification of Japan in the 1500s and the players are competing to determine which one is the best "unifier".
Every turn players select different actions for their many provinces. Your actions include "requisitioning" rice and gold, military recruiting, building important structures, army movement and combat. The order in which the actions occur is randomized every turn so sometimes you don't know if you'll have enough money by the time you have an opportunity to buy that nice temple you've had your eye on. There's a lot going on but it's all pretty logical and the game is relatively easy to learn.

The amount of combat you might see varies greatly on your positioning and your strategy. In my last game, one player attacked every turn, while a different player only took over neutral provinces.

Every player plans their actions at the same time so there is minimal down time in the game.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Shogun is the amazing combat tower. If you attack someone, you add your attacking armies to his or her defending armies and drop them all into the combat tower. Some of the armies will remain trapped inside the tower, while others that were already inside will be knocked loose. When the armies exit at the bottom, whoever has the most armies is the winner of the conflict. In the last game I played, one province got swapped back and forth about five times.

Shogun is another of those Euro/Ameritrash hybrids (like Friedrich and Conquest of the Empire) so there is a wargame element. However, the complexity of the wargame element isn't much above Risk so don't let that scare you off.

Power Grid

2nd Session, (roughly) 5:15 pm:

Zach will compete with up to Five (5) other power brokers in Power Grid!


Power Grid is one of those rare cross-over games that is actually popular. Heavy gamers like Power Grid. Light gamers like Power Grid. Eurogamers and Ameritrash fans both like Power Grid. And Electrical Engineers love Power Grid because it is a game about generating and distributing electrical power after all and there aren't too many of those.

Each turn flows in a logical pattern: you decide if you want to build a new power plant or not, you buy fuel for your power plants, and you decide how many cities you'll provide power to. Then those cities pay you some lovely money. Hey! Don't spend that on cheap garden equipment and $5 osculating fans! You need to invest that money back into your infrastructure dude! As the game progresses, new types of power plants are available that will power a larger number of cities. Will you be the first to use nuclear power? Perhaps you want to avoid pollution and stick with wind power -- the fuel cost is sure cheap that way.

The game can meander along fairly peacefully but gets more frantic as the end looms. Then usually at the end of the game there's a mad rush to power as many cities as you can with at least one person caught thinking they'd get one more crucial turn.

For those who love playing Power Grid the designer has produced several alternate maps for variety. There is also an alternate power plant deck coming out in the near future.

PS There isn't any real electricity in the game so don't expect powering your cities to look exactly like it does in the photo.

Plague & Pestilence

2nd Session, (roughly) 5:15 pm:

Scott will go bubonic on up to Five (5) other players in Plague & Pestilence!

Plague & Pestilence is "a light card game involving the build-up and destruction of medieval towns. In the Prosperity phase, players attempt to build up their populations via stealing from other players or via improvements. Then the Death Ship arrives bearing the plague! In the Plague phase players attempt to kill off other players by playing war, pestilence or other deadly attacks. The cards contain illustrations reminiscent of medieval woodcuts featuring the Grim Reaper."

Each player has a city. Each player rolls the die each turn to see how fast their city grows. The cards you're dealt can be played to improve your city with things like aqueducts, or to damage someone else's city. You can even start wars! When the plague starts, your population will drop. The winner is the last city with any population left.
This game is now rare and has been sold on ebay for nearly $300! Yikes! So be nice to Scott's cards. Being nice includes not stealing them.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The next game day at Plenty will be on Sunday, August 26th!

Strap on your katana and lead your samurai to victory or death in Shogun!

We will be playing other games as well, of course.

Here's a view of the famous tower in Shogun in which the armies are dropped to determine the winner of a battle. There are tiny ledges inside on which your armies can catch -- or be dislodged. It's the coolest battle randomizer ever!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Our next game day at Plenty will be Sunday, August 26th!


Start your props spinning and prepare to duel in the skies in Wings of War!
Ted got these beautiful minis for the game and is looking forward to showing them off.

We will be playing other games also, of course.