Everyone still recovering from Gathering of Friends 5? We were pretty tired after a week's work of preparation, and a day or two of recovery. It was wonderful to have my Mom and Dad and Tab and two of his boys with us too, they were pretty tired from the 10 to 20 hours of travel to Clarks Summit from Pittsburgh and Toledo.
And thank you so much to the Northampton friends - it's close to a 3-hour round trip to come here, and I know many had bookstudy or service groups on Saturday morning, not mention meeting the next morning.
We really had a lot of fun, I enjoyed running from table to table, watching the smiling faces and seeing the progress friends have been making in understanding and deepening their knowledge of German-style boardgames.
I was able to play
San Juan, Mykerinos, Power Grid, Zertz, and Capitol over the course of Friday and Saturday. Some thoughts about the experience:
San Juan is in my top ten favorite games. A card-game spin-off of the number one ranked Puerto Rico,
San Juan has the feel of it's big brother without the time investment or the fiddly components and setup. Just deal out a few cards, play them in front of you, draw some, shuffle.
You can play
San Juan even four player in probably 40 minutes if you hurry, which Jared, Angie, Kevin and I did. Because we had 20 other guests around the house playing through their games, I didn't want to tie myself up too much into anything much longer, and I encouraged everyone to play quickly through their hands. Looking back, this decreased the enjoyment of the game a little for me I think.
Note: I write this review for those who have a good knowledge of
San Juan. Check out the rules at boardgamegeek, and buy this great family game.
So Angie, Jared, Kevin and I sat down for a speed game of
San Juan. After the deal, I played Tobacco as my first plantation, immediately thinking I would go for the 6-point Guild Hall (which adds two points to each plantation at the end of the game). The two Guild Halls in the deck are usually intensely fought over, as "guilding" is an easy win compared to trying to go after the 6-point City Hall, which adds one point for each violet production building. There is a 6-pt. monument building, which I've rarely (never?) seen anyone win with.
Kevin on my right built the prefecture, to take advantage of what appeared to be Angie's desire to play the councilor action (sitting to my left). Jared sat across from me, and played what I can only remember as a mixed bag of cards, although he had decent plantations and Produced and Traded a lot. I quickly played Gold Mine, as did Kevin, trying to take advantage of what appeared Jared was going to do (play Prospector at every opportunity). I played the 5-point Library to further take advantage of Prospector pulls that I planned on making (the Library doubles the "privilege" that each player gets for pulling an action).
One of the most memorable plays of the game came on the first Gold Mine bonus from Jared's Prospector pull. We were all playing at such a pace that I excitedly started to flip over the four cards that the Gold Mine gives you, looking to see if there were no matching cards: this then gives the Gold Mine player a choice of one of the four cards as a bonus - a nice deal since it happens on a opponent's turn.
Kevin was watching closely along with the others as I dealt out the cards on the table. When I reached to take my choice of cards (since there was no match), Kevin interrupted and claimed it as his. Not remembering that he even had a Gold Mine, I was
nonplussed. He was sitting between Jared and I, and technically, in the order of play would have had first crack at the card flip. Fortunately for me, I flipped up the next four, and ended up with a bonus as well.
Angie struggled in several build phases, and despite pulling councilor several times, was not able to get the cards she was looking for apparently, as after the game finished with the twelve builds, she had only 9 or so as I remember. Jared Traded more than anyone else, but was not able to secure a good enough large building to score bonus points to make him competitive.
Kevin ended up playing the Guild Hall along with me, and made good use of 3 Silver Mines, which netted him 15 points. He ended up beating me 38 to 37. Jarred and Angie were in the 20's.
Really enjoyed this fast-paced game of
San Juan. More post-mortems later...
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