Twice a year the RipCity Gamers group journeys to Sun River for 3-5 days of gaming goodness.  Doug and his family are kind enough to offer up their vacation home to a bunch of gaming geeks - this tradition started back in 1999 and has continued ever since with gatherings (hah!) in May and November.  I missed the event last November, but was eager to accept the invitation this time around.  George and I drove up Friday afternoon, arriving around 4pm.  Doug, Dave, and Mike had arrvied about two hours earlier and we got started pretty quickly.

Rather than my normal format for session reports, I'm going to make this one more photo oriented and post comments on the games I played with the pics.  I'll make some final commentary when I do my entry for today's (Sunday's) gaming.

The five of us (clockwise from left: Mike, Dave, Doug, George) started things off with a game of Titan: the Arena. I somehow managed to win this one, though I'm not quite sure how.  I think this was a case of nobody realizing how good my bets were until the 3rd round or so.

Mike and George dueling at Vortex.  I haven't played this one yet, though George spent some time explaining it to me on the drive back today. I'm definitely interested in giving it a try.

Check out the shelf-space for a sampling of the games folks brought for the weekend.  This was before KC and Rita showed up, so there was a pretty sizable collection there.  Less than in prior years I'm told though.

George and Dave playing A Game of Thrones CCG, I believe with the Ice & Fire premium starter decks.  More on this later - I got a chance to play on Saturday.

KC and Rita arrived and while George and Dave played AGOT: CCG, the rest of us played my favorite party game: Schrille Stille.  I can't remember who won this game - I think it was KC or I.  Truth is, I don't really care - this game is always a blast and a great way to start an evening of gaming.

Next, KC introduced us to his latest prototype, Tres Amigos.  This is a light trick-taking card game, reminiscent of Euchre but with a few nice twists.  The game needs some tweaking still, but it was certainly fun.  The theme is lifted from the classic comedy.

What better game is there for seven people than Bang!?  I can't think of any... though it can be brutal when someone leaves the game early.  Like when the deputy (me) takes out the renegade (KC) before he takes his first action, while sitting in jail.  That's why you see KC cutting out pieces for one of his prototypes.  Fortunately we were playing the High Noon expansion so he was able to come back to life for an encore.  This time the sheriff (Mike) and his deputies (Rita and I) were victorious.

After Bang! we started some more serious gaming.  This crowd played Atlantic Star, the remake of Show Manager.  Which was a remake of Premiere.  Not that this means anything to me as I've played none of them.

KC offered to teach us all Robo Rally, a game I recently acquired from KC.

Robo Rally is a programming game where players attempt to guide their robot through a series of checkpoints while avoiding hazards on the factory floor and while distrupting the progress of the other robots.  This is a great game that I look forward to playing again, but it seems like it could be quite long.  We only played to one checkpoint and the game lasted almost two hours.  Much of this was setup and rules explanation though.

Mike, Doug, Chuck, and Dave enjoy a game of San Juan while we finish our Robo Rally session.  I believe Dave won this game.  Side note: a few of us brought our iPods, so there was a near continuous stream of music wafting through the house.  At this time in the evening, my iPod was in play.  Notice the headphones on Dave - I think they may have come out when my random shuffle brought out the “Pina Colada“ song.

My last game of the evening was Foppen, one of my favorite trick taking games.  I managed to get through the game in the black for the duration; everyone else was negative for most or even all.  Good hands I suppose. Update: Oops - as George pointed out, this is actually Attribute here.  We also played Foppen, but that's not what I'm showing here.

Perhaps my photo taking has gone a bit far, as Dave and Doug are clearly annoyed with this shot of them playing the GameCube.

KC and Dave finish out the evening with a serious game of Loopin' Louie.

I mentioned last week that some parts were missing from my Axis & Allies: D-Day game.  Sent an email to Hasbro/Avalon Hill/WOTC and got this quick response:

Please accept our apology for your defective product. I have sent out the replacement part requested to the address you provided below.

And the parts showed up 4 days later.  Nice.

Forgot to mention - Jacob's baseball team took second place out of 8 teams at last week's Oregon City baseball tournament.  Congrats team!

Jacob's team posing for the camera after taking second place.

Quick session report this time - I'm in Sun River with the RipCity group and got a bit behind.  Gotta catch up so that I can start posting photos from the weekend!

Last Sunday morning, before the finale of Jacob's tournament, he and I sat down to play a couple of new games for us: O Zoo Le Mio and Alexandros.

O Zoo Le Mio came out first and was our favorite.  A fairly light game, it is reminscent of Carcassonne and other tile laying games.  Players are in charge of building out their own zoo by laying tiles and trying to make attractive exhibits to steal visitors away from opponents.

Jacob examining his zoo.

Exhibits become attractive by having adjacency with others of the same type.  This isn't always easy because of tile placement rules.  When your attraction has the most stars, you attract two visitors.  Second place attracts a single visitor.  These visitors, along with adornments like park benches (created when you enclose an area with a path) and trees (awarded to the players with the most and second-most shrubs), score points at the end of five separate scoring rounds.

Beautiful bits in this game.

Jacob got off to a strong start, but by the final rounds I was ahead.  Given that each round successively scores a multiplier (first round 1x, second 2x, etc.), I finished pretty far ahead.  This game was a blast and would probably be even better with three or four players.

Alexandros, on the other hand, will take a few more plays for me to decide if it is a keeper (I got both of these games for 50% off so I figured it was worth the risk).  Jacob and I both found it a bit dry and abstract.  Players try to wall off and control regions delimitted by Alexander's wanderings.  The bits are certainly nice enough, especially for a small-box game.

If you still haven't taken the plunge and picked up an RSS reader, maybe all you need is a nice tutorial on what it is and how to use.  Ole wrote a great RSS cookbook for just this purpose.

Mark wrote a very insightful post about his recent experiences at the Gathering.  Even though I've lobbied for an invite, it would take some serious thought before I would attend due to the time (opportunity) cost.  My vacation time is precious and losing 5 days that could be spent with the family would be tough. Oh, and Mark: I would have watched the basketball playoff game with you!

United Airlines has been doing a lot of things right lately.  I spend a lot of time on this airline, and am already half-way to 1K status this year (missed it by about 8,000 miles last year, booking a total of 92,000 qualifying miles, and over 200,000 actual miles).  I'm not talking about Ted, though I did hear an interesting theory on why they started that brand (maybe I'll discuss that later).  United has rolled out fairly ubiquitous T-Mobile wireless broadband in their terminals (PDX, O'Hare, Denver, SFO, and probably others).  I buy blocks of day passes and make pretty good use of the connectivity.  Right now I'm sitting in the Red Carpet Club at PDX getting ready for my flight to O'Hare.

So, why is this day significant?

1. Julie and I were married 13 years ago today in St. Louis, May 18 1991.  What an amazing 13 years!  We were married the day after she graduated from Washington University; I had graduated the year before and was half-way through my graduate program at UC Santa Barbara.  Since getting married we've lived in Culver City CA, Dayton OH, Boise ID, and Sherwood OR.  We also managed to bring into the world a couple of pretty cool boys.
2. I was commissioned into the US Air Force on May 18, 1990.
3. Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980.  Even though I was fairly young (12) living far away (Indianapolis, IN), I have very vivid memories following this story line.

I just created a game of Wallenstein over at SpielByWeb.  Title: WallyBlog, Password: ripcity.

This is where I test to see if my blog can be used to ping someone about their tardiness in an online game.

Friday evening Jacob and I started our first game of Axis & Allies: D-Day, a game that we managed to finish tonight after his baseball game.  Jacob played the Allies (USA and UK) while I took on the role of the Axis.

Jacob looking at the initial board setup.

The game starts furiously with Allied paratroopers dropping in to start the game, followed by shore bombardments and the first amphibious assault.  Action is non-stop with little opportunity to avoid combat given the 10 turn time limit on the Allies.

Thank you Hasbro for not making me take all of these pieces off the plastic trees.  The game comes ready to play, though like most I was missing a few pieces (1 German tank, 1 UK infantry, 1 extra German infantry).

The order of the each turn is managed through Order Cards, which are turned over in succession each turn to call out the phases.  This is a nice system if a bit tedious at times, though by removing cards that are no longer relevant as the game moves things start moving very quickly.  Our first game lasted about 2 - 2.5 hours, but I suspect we will get it down to 90 minutes pretty easily.

These Americans look ready to storm the beach.

This game is not for those who prefer to avoid dice rolling - as with any A&A game, dice rolling is a major part of the game and can unwind even the greatest of plans.  For my kids this is considered a bonus because it can also be a great equalizer.

One great component of this game is the use of patrol fighter aircraft that the Allied player can position on the board.  These units do not attack like ground units, but rather wait for Axis ground units to move into our out of thier region.  When they do, the aircraft get a shot at each unit moving, rolling a single d6 and eliminating that unit on a 1.  At one point Jacob rolled 4 consecutive 1's, eliminating 4 of my tanks.

As I found in my playtesting, this game appears to be very well balanced with tons of tension throughout the game.  The Allied player needs to capture three towns and hold them for a complete turn before the 10th turn ends, meaning they must capture by the 9th.  While Jacob was routinely destroying my forces, he lost track of time and around turn 7 he realized his time crunch and starting getting more determined to achieve his victory conditions.  Unfortunately for him St. Lo was too hotly contested and he was unable to extinguish my troops there in time to claim victory.  After the game I gave him some advice on how to slow down my troops, use his tanks more effectively (the can move two regions per turn), and concentrate his forces a bit more effectively.

Final battle at St. Lo - the Axis are victorious.

This game will come out frequently, and will be a perfect 3-player light wargame to play with Matthew and Jacob.  If you are a fan of the A&A series but don't often have time for a full game, consider picking this one up.